Veteran television executive David Madden has hung a $7.5 million price tag on a triple-story contemporary villa set on a high ridge in L.A.’s tony Bel Air neighborhood. The property is available through Cooper Mount at The Agency.
Once president of AMC Networks and Fox Broadcasting Company, and now president of Berlanti Productions, Greg Berlanti’s powerhouse production company that has churned out numerous hits like the DC supernatural drama “Superman & Lois,” Madden purchased the then freshly refurbished home in July 2015 for $7 million.
Online records show Madden and his wife, Marci Pool, have wanted to sell the house for years, first listing it in the spring of 2017 at almost $10 million. Since then, the house has had been on and off the market several times at numerous prices that, in late 2019, dipped as low as $6.5 million. The house was also available, in 2020, as a rental, first at $20,000 per month and then at $28,000.
Originally built in the mid-1940s but extensively updated and modernized since, the slightly more than 5,700-square foot contemporary’s boxy volumes and crisp linearity is relaxed inside and out with stacked stone accents, gigantic windows, and a variety of exotic woods. Cleared of personal effects and staged for the selling process, the family-sized home has five en-suite bedrooms and seven bathrooms, including the top-level primary suite, which showcases vaulted ceilings, a fireplace, a marble bath with circular soaking tub, and an oversized walk-in closet lined with glass-fronted wardrobes.
Wide-plank honey-toned hardwood floors ground the main floor’s combination living and dining room where a stone fireplace adds warmth and banks of floor-to-ceiling glass frame cinematic cross-canyon views over the surrounding mountaintops. Indeed, from the deck outside the dining area, there’s a pretty good view of the 120-acre Enchanted Hill estate that trophy property collecting former Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently scooped up for $65 million from the estate of late Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen.
With a trendy textured tile backsplash behind the commercial-style range, the kitchen is a hardworking culinary space arranged around a doublewide island snack bar with a calm, organic palette of taupes and whites. Other highlights include a glass-enclosed wine cellar nipped beneath the stairs on the lower level, a wet bar fashioned from lustrous eucalyptus wood, a library/office with custom shelving, and a mirror-walled fitness room.
Enveloped in mature plantings, clipped hedges and huge trees that blot out neighboring homes, the terraced backyard is skinny-dip-private, with both sun-splashed and shaded terraces, a crystalline pool and, for the pets and kids, a small patch of evergreen faux-grass.
Madden and Pool relocated, about two years ago, to the historic Windsor Square neighborhood, where tax records show they shifted architectural gears with the $6.5 million purchase of a lavishly renovated and updated 1928 Spanish Colonial Revival mansion purchased from “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” author Heidi Murkoff.