SELLER: Estate of A. Jerrold “Jerry” Perenchio
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $350,000,000
SIZE: (approx.) 10.3 acres with 25,000 square foot main house and 5,700 square foot guesthouse
YOUR MAMA’S NOTES: Word on the Platinum Triangle real estate street is that the epic Bel Air compound of recently deceased media tycoon A. Jerrold “Jerry” Perenchio is set to hit the market an elephantine asking price of $350,000,000, making it the most expensive property available on the open market in the United States.
The 10.3-acre spread, known as Chartwell, is anchored by an imperial, limestone-faced chateau-style mansion of about 25,000-square-feet designed by architect Sumner Spaulding in the 1930s for a property developer who built it as a gift for his wife who, unfortunately for him, hated its unabashed opulence and never moved in. The massive mansion sat empty until the 1940s when it was acquired by hotelier Arnold Kirkeby whose family hung on to the property until 1986, during which time it was featured as the Clampett family’s Bevery Hills mansion on the 1960s sitcom “The Beverly Hillbillies.” After it was acquired by Mister Perenchio, über-tony French decorator Henri Samuel, whose clients include members of the Vanderbilt and Rothschild families, was brought in oversee a multi-million dollar refresh of the monumental manse and a joint press release from listing brokers at Coldwell Banker Global Luxury, Hilton & Hyland and Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices indicates the 18th century French Neoclassical inspired mansion includes a “ballroom, world-class wine cellar, formal salon and period-paneled dining room.”
During his 30-plus year residency and unquestionably deep-pocketed stewardship, Mister Perenchio substantially added to the estate. The main portion of the property incorporates five contiguous parcels, one of which is the longtime residence of Ronald and Nancy Reagan that was purchased by Mister Perenchio June 2016 for $15 million, and there are two more non-contiguous properties located across the street. There are also vast, pristinely groomed gardens that surely require a small fortune and half of a dozen full-time gardeners or more to maintain, a roughly 5,700-square-foot guesthouse designed in the early 1930s by Wallace Neff, a 75-foot-long resort-style swimming pool and pool house connected to the main house by an elevator and a tunnel, a lighted tennis court and a subterranean parking garage that will accommodate dozens of cars. The main house sits on a high point of the sprawling estate where it has sweeping, over-the-treetops views from downtown to the Pacific Ocean.
Presumably, some if not most of Mister Perenchio’s other residential real estate holdings will eventually be sold off. They include a nearly 5,000-square-foot penthouse atop the prestigious Museum Tower in Midtown Manhattan as well as a private golf course that abuts the guard-gated Colony enclave in Malibu wherein the media mogul owned more than half of a dozen of the homes including three directly on the beach.
Perenchio, a former talent manager and sports promoter, teamed up in the mid 1970s with Norman Lear and Alan “Bud” Yorkin on Tandem Productions, which turned out a long string of iconic sitcoms that included “All in the Family,” “Sanford and Son,” “Maude,” “The Facts of Life,” and “Diff’rent Strokes.” He later and briefly owned the Loews Theater Chain and in the early 1990s he partnered with Mexican media mogul Emilio Azcárraga Milmo to buy the Spanish language Univision television network that they sold in 2007 for $13.5 billion to investor Haim Saban’s Saban Capital Group, Inc.
Chartwell is listed by Jeff Hyland, Drew Fenton and Gary Gold of Hilton & Hyland; Joyce Rey, Jade Mills and Alexandra Allen of Coldwell Banker Global Luxury; and Drew Gitlin and Susan Gitlin of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices.
