SELLER: Kevin James
LOCATION: Delray Beach, Fla.
PRICE: $28.85 million
SIZE: (approx.) 26,000 square feet, 8 bedrooms, 9 full and 3 half bathrooms
YOUR MAMA’S NOTES: Kevin James has amassed a considerable fortune during a successful career playing well-meaning if unsophisticated blue-collar boobs on both the small and silver screens. But, make no mistake, butter beans, Mister James is no rube, and in real life the “Hotel Transylvania” and “Hotel Transylvania 2” star lives in sumptuous, white-collar splendor in a huge, professionally decorated mansion on nearly three assiduously groomed, ocean-view acres in Delray Beach, Fla., that was heaved on the open market this week at $28.85 million.
Mister James received an Emmy nomination in 2006 for his beloved-by-many and enviably lucrative run on the syndicated situation comedy “King of Queens,” and this year, he’s up for four Razzies for “Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2,” a “tacky, numbingly inane sequel” to “Paul Blart: Mall Cop” that, despite an ocean of sour-faced reviews, did a bit more than $107 million in worldwide box office. Anyways, Mister James bought the bulk of the gated and grandly proportioned estate, about 20 miles south of Palm Beach, in August of 2012 for $18.5 million, and the following June, per property records we peeped at, shelled out another $4.25 million for the undeveloped 0.92-acre lot next door that brought the full size of his Floridian demesne to 2.77 acres. According to the Palm Beach County Tax Man, the mansion, described in listing details as a “Mediterranean Revival,” was built brand new in 2008, carries head-snapping annual taxes of nearly $450,000, and officially measures in at a commodious 12,828 square feet, although current online marketing materials show the “main house and guest apartment consist of more than 26,000 total square feet” with 8 bedrooms and 9 full and 3 half bathrooms.
A series of plush and glamour-laced if not exactly homey-looking living and entertaining spaces mix first-rate finishes and what listing details call “Old World elements” with a slew of high-tech creature comforts: high ceilings with exposed wood beams, gleaming dark chocolate hardwood floors, scads of column-supported archways, more French doors than this property gossip has fingers and toes, an elevator that services all three floors, and a comprehensive, camera-equipped security system. Ample formal living and dining rooms both have prominent fireplaces, of course, as does the pecky cypress paneled library that also features a barrel-vaulted red brick ceiling. There’s yet another fireplace in a solarium sort of space that appears to double as a music room with a black baby grand piano pushed up in the corner. A bar room adjoins a moodily lit, 28-foot-long combination family room/media lounge and the sunny, 37-foot-long eat-in kitchen has another barrel-vaulted red brick ceiling and is outfitted will all manner of culinary bells and whistles that include a commercial-quality, walk-in refrigerator. A finished basement level comes in at 4,914 square feet, according to online marketing materials, and offers a myriad of entertainment and recreational amenities such as a mirror-walled gym, spa and massage suite, children’s play room, and a walk-in wine cellar and tasting room lined with Lucite bottle racks. The tropically verdant and palm-strewn grounds include a children’s playground plus a soccer-pitch-sized patch of grass along with a swimming pool and grassy sunbathing area backed by a vine-draped stone colonnade. A spacious poolside pavilion includes an al fresco lounge with fireplace and a complete kitchen with integrated grilling station.
As far as we know, although we can’t say for sure, Mister James hasn’t owned a residence in Los Angeles since 2013, when, in March of that year, he sold a 5,386-square-foot house in Encino for $1.616 million and just a couple of months later unloaded a much more substantial and significantly more deluxe 11,291-square-foot mansion, also in Encino, for $5.5 million to Donna Scott, the former beauty queen-actress widow of late and lauded film and television director-producer Tony Scott.
Listing photos: The Fite Group
