June gloom seems to have arrived early this year, at least here in Southern California. Still, the grey skies can only temporarily disguise the fact that summertime is already upon us. So Yolanda thought we might spend the rest of the week in Malibu, at least here on the blog. You know, to get folks into the upbeat spirit or something.
Don’t like Malibu? Don’t want to read about Malibu? No worries! That is a-okay. We know the pricey, often traffic-clogged city is not to everyone’s taste. Feel free to temporarily tune out and peruse some other real estate websites for the remainder of the week. Then check back in a few days and we promise to serve up some juicy morsels more attuned to your delicate real estate appetites.
For the rest of y’all, today we shall discuss a large and rather uniquely-styled house on the inland side of PCH, a good 6 minutes’ drive from the beach and tucked up behind Malibu High School. The family-sized home was sold recently for the sum of $5,330,000 to one of those all-too-common corporate entities.
Anywho, a wee bit of research reveals the new owner is a 23-year-old lass named Carson Meyer.
Miss Meyer is a local gal — raised in Malibu and an alumnus of Malibu High — who is now striving to carve out a name for herself, deep in the cold and unrepentant belly of Hollywood. Last year, Vanity Fair labeled her “a young actress on the brink of stardom,” and she has had roles in recent films such as The Nice Guys(2016), SPF-18 (2017) and Family Blood (2018).
In case anyone is wondering how the college-age Miss Meyer can afford a multi-million dollar Malibu estate, Yolanda will tell you. Our gurl comes from a wealthy family — very wealthy. Her daddy Ron Meyer — now in his 70s — is a co-founder of talent agency juggernaut CAA (Creative Artists Agency). And for a full 18 years — from 1995 to 2013 — he served as President and CEO of Universal Studios. According to our pal Wiki Pedia, Mr. Meyer is the longest-serving chief of a major motion picture company in the history of Hollywood. In September 2013, Mr. Meyer was promoted (or more like kicked upstairs?) to become Vice Chairman of Universal Studio’s parent company, NBCUniversal.
Miss Meyer is the youngest of Mr. Meyer’s four children, and the second child born to his second (and current) wife, an Australian producer lady named Kelly Chapman. You may also recognize Miss Meyer’s older half-sister Jennifer Meyer, who is a well-known LA jewelry designer and was married to non-working actor Tobey Maguire for more than a decade.
Anyway, Yolanda happens to know that Miss Meyer has already moved into her Malibu pad with her man, singer-songwriter/haiku composer Johnathan Rice.
Heavens to Betsy! We know this might seem a little presumptuous of Yolanda to ask, but ain’t Miss Meyer a little young to be playin’ house with her boyfriend? Or is Yolanda just old-fashioned? Back in our day, it was uncouth for young ladies to call gentlemen on the telephone, especially after certain hours.
But we suppose that in this brave new world of foul-mouthed 9-year-old “flexers”, it really ain’t a big deal.
The large house (5,603-square-feet of living space) was built in 2004 by fine art photographer and gallerist Robert Weingarten, the guy who just sold the place last month to Miss Meyer. The spacious, sloped 1.7-acre lot lies near the end of a quiet cul-de-sac and features distant ocean views. A long gated driveway leads to a motorcourt and three-car garage on the main structure’s side.
To be honest, Yolanda does not have the slightest idea what the proper architectural vernacular is here. Some sort of oddball attempt at an asymmetrical cedar-shingled Dutch Colonial with a gambrel roof? We do understand what the architect(s) were going for — a farmhouse type thing like y’all might find over in the Hamptons. But something about this front facade gives your gurl indigestion. Why is the house so squat, and what’s with all the lumps and bumps? And the attempt at asymmetry comes off as rather clumsy.
But what do we know? Looks like several rich folks wanted this house. The $5.33 million that Miss Meyer paid is actually $80,000 more than the original asking price, and the house sold a mere one month after hittin’ the market. So there you go.
Once one gets past the unusual architecture, the rest of the home is actually quite clean, contemporary, and completely inoffensive. The main floor sports trendy dark hardwood floors that flow throughout the fireplace-equipped living and family rooms. Also on the ground level: a formal dining room that conveniently opens to an outdoor terrace, two powder rooms, a guest/maid’s bedroom suite, a library with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and a kitchen with a center island and butcher block countertops.
While we appreciate the decorative risk-taking with the island’s blue cabinets, we do not love how they clash with the white in the rest of the kitchen. (Yolanda is also not crazy about that ice-blue tile backsplash, but we digress…)
Upstairs are three additional en-suite bedrooms. The surprisingly enormous master suite includes a large bedroom, a separate fireplace-equipped sitting room, a spa-like master bath with a built-in tub, and two separate walk-in closets.
Connected to the house by a covered outdoor walkway is a separate one-room study/office that Yolanda imagines could be converted into a tiny recording studio or additional storage space of some sort, if Miss Meyer desires either of those things.
One thing that Yolanda definitely appreciates about this property is the setting. The entire house is surrounded by a variety of shaded porches and terraces that provide near-unlimited options for dining, entertaining, and quiet meditation. The grassy and fully landscaped backyard adds to the bucolic feel — y’all could close your eyes, listen to the crickets chirp and almost imagine yourself in Tennessee or Kentucky. Ahh. Or is that just the alcohol talking?
We do wish the property had a better ocean view, but y’all can’t have everything you want. Not even for $5.3 million.
Oh, and Miss Meyer does not need a house with head-on ocean vistas — if she wants one she can just hop in her luxury vehicle and zip over to her parents’ blufftop architectural pad on Malibu’s prodigiously pricey Paradise Cove.
Back in the 90s, Mr. Meyer hired the renowned architect Charles Gwathmey (and his architectural firm Gwathmey Siegel & Associates) to design him a family-sized home on a 3-acre Paradise Cove parcel. The ultra-contemporary Meyer Residence, as Yolanda assumes it is known (?), was completed circa 1999.
Sandwiched between two equally massive estates (one owned by billionaire Public Storage heiress Tamara Gustavson and the other by Bosnian philanthropist Diana Jenkins), the Meyer Residence weighs in with a portly 13,693-square-feet of monolithic interior space. The property features a formal gated entry with an epic long driveway, a tennis court, and football field-sized lawns. And check out that staircase that zigs and zags all the way down the cliff! Shit, that’ll give your buttcheeks a workout.
For more photos of Mr. Meyer’s house, visit Gwathmey Siegel’s website.
Anywho, we know the style of Mr. Meyer’s house may not be to all tastes — a few folks we know have dared to call it “cold” and even “antiseptic” — but Yolanda loves it. And love or hate, everyone can agree that it is certainly somethin’. It is here, at this certainly-somethin’ pad on spectacularly scenic Paradise Cove — with the aquamarine Pacific Ocean as a backdrop — where Miss Meyer was raised.
Lucky girl.
Listing agent: Ellen Francisco, Coldwell Banker
Carson Meyer’s agent: Chris Cortazzo, Coldwell Banker