SELLER: Norm and Mary Pattiz
LOCATION: Montecito, CA
PRICE: $15,900,000
SIZE: 9,430 square feet, 6 bedrooms, 5 full and 3 half bathrooms
YOUR MAMA’S NOTES: A friendly real estate birdie we’ll call P.R. Patty was kind enough to let Your Mama know that radio syndication tycoon Norm Pattiz — he founded and sold the Westwood One radio empire and is currently the CEO of Bev Hills-based Courtside Entertainment Group — (re-)listed his deluxe digs in California’s low-key but wildly ritzy seaside enclave of Montecito with a $15.9 million price tag.
Property records and other online resources reveal Mister Pattiz and his wife, Mary Turner Pattiz acquired the gated and fully landscaped 2.73 acre spread with its luxurious (and benignly decorated) 9,430-square-foot Mediterranean-style villa in June 2006 for $17.5 million from the late entertainment industry executive Harold “Hal” Gaba. As it turns out, this isn’t the first time the Pattiz’s have put their sumptuous Montecito estate up for grabs; Starting in May 2012, the property was on the open market for about five months with an in-hindsight optimistic $18.4 million asking price.
Located about 1.5 miles due west of Oprah Winfrey’s 40-some acre Promised Land, the Pattiz pad is approached down a stately, palm tree-lined driveway that makes a soft curve towards a baronial, parking lot-sized forecourt with central fountain and three-bay detached garage. Iron and glass doors that probably cost more than a well-equipped medium-sized BMW open to a vast and voluminous central foyer that was surely designed to impress guests with its soaring double-height ceiling, rustic-luxe natural stone tile floor material and prom-picture worthy wrought iron railed staircase.
Public entertaining spaces include generously proportioned formal living and dining rooms with rich wood floors, arched doorways and verdant garden and rugged mountain views. In the living room there’s a chunky carved stone fireplace mantelpiece that looks like it could have been ripped out of a European castle, an exposed wood coffered ceiling and half a dozen Gothic-style pointed arch windows and French doors. The French doors in the formal dining room have a more Romanesque, curved arch as well as a (painted) coffered ceiling interestingly installed at a 45-degree angle to the rectangular space.
Other semi-public spaces include a paneled library with built-in bookshelves and a fireplace and a sunny sun room lined with more arched French doors and anchored by another fireplace. A wide arch joins the family room to a spacious, all beige and brown center island kitchen with adjoining breakfast area, wood-beamed ceiling, stone tile floors and slab stone counter tops, antiqued raised panel wood cabinets, and top-grade commercial-style appliances.
According to P.R. Patty, there are a total of six bedrooms and 5 full and 3 half bathrooms in the main house, including a main floor guest suite with private bathroom and fireplace, a main floor staff suite, and a half bathroom off the garage for landscapers and other domestic workers. The spacious and luxurious second floor master suite certainly isn’t going to win any decorating awards but does have has a sinuous and highly unusual ribbed vaulted ceiling that sort of makes this property gossip feel a bit dizzy, a carved stone fireplace in the sitting area, and two fitted walk-in closets. There are dual bathrooms, one with a trio of narrow arched windows that open to an expansive stone terrace with mountain views.
A deep loggia on the rear of the residence links the indoor living areas to a broad terrace that gives way to a vast flat lawn that wraps around the back of the house. The lawn, plenty large enough to host several concurrent croquet games, stretches out towards a stone balustraded double staircase that leads down to the swimming pool set into a lush patch of well-watered lawn. The swimming pool is book ended by a one bedroom and one bathroom guesthouse and an a stone-walled open air dining pavilion with fireplace and full kitchen. A stone balustraded roof terrace atop the poolside loggia has a second, ivy-draped outdoor fireplace and wrap around, over-the treetop mountain and sky views.
According to P.R. Patty, the Pattiz’s would like to sell their Montecito estate because they don’t spend much time there anymore and recently acquired a Beverly Hills estate that is closer and more convenient to Mister P.’s work and business concerns not to mention his über-prime court side seats for Lakers games. To be honest, this property gossip isn’t quite sure where Mister and Missus Pattiz bunk in Bev Hills nowadays but we do know they are hardly strangers to lavish living in the 90210. In 1985 they shelled out nearly six million clams for a 4-plus acre estate high in the mountains above Beverly Hills that they bought from billionaire businessman David Geffen who had scooped it up sometime in the late ‘70s or early ‘80s from “That Girl” Marlo Thomas for an unknown amount. Two decades later, in May 2006, The Pattiz’s put the two-parcel estate up for sale with a $27.5 price tag and ended up selling it off in two parts; The lower section, connected to the upper part of the estate by a private funicular, was sold in December 2006 for $3.5 million and the upper portion a few months earlier for $18.5 million to Hard Rock Café co-founder Peter Morton. As far as we know Mister Morton never actually moved in to the dour, 8,100-plus-square foot Tudor manse but did hold on to it until March 2010 when he sold it at a brutal, multi-million dollar loss to hedge funder/hotel developer Reagan Silbur for $15.5 million. Mister Silbur, who also never occupied the premises, quickly caught a case of The Real Estate Fickle and flipped the property in May 2011, to it’s current owner, Oscar winner Sandra Bullock for $16.19 million.
The Pattiz estate in Montecito is represented by Joe Boudre at Sotheby’s International Realty.
Listing photos: David Palermo for Sotheby’s International Realty
