Choosing to write about this one will for sure beget your gurl Yolanda some serious eyerolls.
Buzz off, boys (and gals). Yes, we know this transaction occurred a full year ago (way back in summer 2015). And we know that there’s many, many other big current stories we could be discussing instead. We know. Our cup runneth over at the moment. But we promise we’ll get to them in due time.
We wanted to write about this one because the house is unique, both parties in the deal are notable, and to our knowledge, nobody else has discussed the buyer yet. So if you don’t care to briefly rewind to 2015, sit pretty until tomorrow. Capiche?
Longtime Tinseltown mover-and-shaker Rick Nicita and his longtime wife, Tom Cruise’s producer partner Paula Wagner — they’ve been married more than 20 years, or an eternity in entertainment industry time — first hauled their multi-structure hilltop complex out onto the open market last February (2015). The asking price was a serious $12,500,000 for the .82-acre double-parcel lot, which way up above Beverly Hills in an area known as (of course) Beverly Hills Post Office. So high up, in fact, that the house is practically in Beverly Park.
The mini-estate eventually sold over the summer to a deliberately-opaque trust. Well, just this week — long after we plum forgot about the property — a little gold nugget of info landed in our lap that conclusively indicates the buyer was none other than busy-busy TV writer/producer/director (and new daddy) Greg Berlanti. More on him to come.
Mr. Nicita & Ms. Wagner purchased the estate — as pointed out by Our Mama over at Variety — in two separate transactions in the early 1990s for a total of $3,845,000. Over the years, the couple carefully remodeled and upgraded the estate, transforming it into the deluxe resort-like pad you see in photos today.
Listing information labels the property a “breathtaking Dutch-influenced compound”. While the home’s roof does sport the requisite Dutch gables, Yolanda is tempted to give that phrase some serious side-eye. We don’t see anything besides those rather hokey-looking things that indicate the architecture or design is “Dutch-influenced”. The entire place comes off — to Yolanda — as a rather tired-looking Traditional trying desperate to be something, anything that it is not. Too harsh? You decide.
Anyway, the 4-bedroom main house sits rather uncomfortably hard up on the road. The formal dining room opens directly (via a wall full of French doors) to a commodious balcony with views stretching from Century City to Catalina and the Pacific Ocean. There’s also commodious and art-filled living and family rooms.
The guest house is two stories with “two bedrooms, a living room with fireplace and steeply pitched double-height ceiling, an adjoining dining room and a full kitchen along with a professional quality fitness room” per the listing. Believe it or not, but the less-than-1-acre estate somehow shoehorns a third structure onto the property. Listing information refers to it as “a separate media building” and it contains a professional quality screening room plus another guest apartment.
The property centers around a free-form swimming pool surrounded by a thick grove of palm trees. There’s also numerous terraces for outdoor dining and sunbathing. And the completely walled and gated compound has at least three separate vehicle entrances, perfect for an errant teen who wants to sneak in and out without parental supervision. But too bad for him or her, there’s also a full security/camera system to foil his/her nighttime plans.
We’re not sure where in LA Mr. Nicita and Ms. Wagner have moved. Both now work independently after formerly serving as a Managing Partner at CAA and CEO of United Artists, respectively, so maybe they don’t need to retain a full-time residence here anymore. But as again sussed out by Your Mama, they still own a multi-million dollar flat in the TriBeCa neighborhood of NYC.
As for Mr. Berlanti, back in 2014 he sold a 3,063-square-foot house just off Sunset Plaza in the Hollywood Hills for $2,450,000 to a financier (Mr. Berlanti bought the place back in 2002 from musician Fred Durst for $1,295,000). We assume he’s currently shacking up with his partner, LA Galaxy soccer star Robbie Rogers (the first openly gay player in major-league professional sports), and his new son in a rental residence somewhere while some renovations are done to his new Beverly Hills Post Office property.
Speaking of renovations, Yolanda is about to get underway with manually re-uploading all our “lost” pictures from the posts prior to our surprise site “renovation”. Yeah, we weren’t able to automatically transfer all our junk. Wish us luck, kiddies. Mon Dieu, we’ll need it!