LOCATION: Southwest Ranches, FL
PRICE: $3,700,000
SIZE: 14,555 square feet, 6 bedrooms, 6.5 bathrooms (total)
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Before any of y'all get to sassin' do hear this: Your Mama well knows we are tardy to this here celebrity property party. None-the-less, we think can offer, in our shamelessly and shamefully wind-baggish two-part series, a more complete picture of the real estate picture of New York Knick Amar'e Stoudemire who has been on a bone fide real estate tear this year that includes the recent purchase of a $3,700,000 (mc)mansion in the quasi-rural suburbs between Fort Lauderdale and Miami, FL.
In early November 2011 there was bit of business in the New York Post about professional basketballer Amar'e Stoudemire putting the squeeze on his pocketbook due (in part, so goes the report) to the recent (and now tentatively ended) NBA lock-out, an event Your Mama does not know a damn thing about other than it means the 2011-12 season has been on hold while the players and the owners duke it out in mediation, adjudication, arbitration or whatever it is people do in big time labor disputes. It should surprise few that Your Mama had never heard of Amar'e Stoudemire–'tis entirely true–and we certainly hadn't (and haven't) an iota why such a daring and unexpectedly placed apostrophe dissevers his name. We took a half-hearted moment to peruse the piece in the Post and quickly scampered along without giving neither his name nor his financial matters another thought.
A few weeks later along came gossip juggernaut TMZ who dropped a humid real estate nugget about this Amar'e Stoudemire person splashing out $3,700,000 to purchase a prodigious mansion in some place called Southwest Ranches, FL. That seemed to Your Mama like a pretty big purchase price for a place in sub-prime mortgage ravaged Florida that we've never heard of before. Our interest piqued and prodded we did some research on Mister Stoudemire that included a look-see at his recent real estate activities, which, as it turns out, have been prolific if quite costly for the highly-compensated professional dribbler.
With all due respect for our scuttle butting compadres at TMZ, we discovered Mister Stoudemire's real real estate story isn't only about the gigantic, garish and architecturally suspicious (mc)mansion he bought in Southwest Ranches, FL for $3,700,000 but rather the several millions of dollars he's lost on the significant number of other properties he's recently dumped from his once-considerable property portfolio.
Before we delve in to that bit of real estate bidness, let's do the right thing and cover our celebrity real estate bases–or goal posts or whatever they have in basketball–and quickly educate the less athletically inclined puppies about just who this unusually named Amar'e Stoudemire person is and why he qualifies to be included in our (admittedly not very exclusive) celebrity real estate sights.
Besides tennis and curling, as all the children know, Your Mama doesn't know a solitary thing about sports, partick the golden triad of organized, American-style professional athletics: football, baseball and basketball. Having no recognition, recollection and/or knowledge whatsoever of just what makes Amar'e Stoudemire sports-world famous we picked up our Princess phone and dialed up our ball crazy b.f.f. Fiona Trambeau who, after shaking of her mid-day boozy-wooze with a few gargled shrieks, informed us Mister Stoudemire is a "quite young, sensationally strapping and deliciously tatted up cup of steaming hot chocolate who can handle [my] her basketballs at any time and at any place of his choosing." She implored Your Mama, in fact, to post her mobile phone number here so Mister Stoudemire could contact her directly and–natch–we told her we would but only so as to get her to shut her lascivious trap and move on to the meat of the matter, so to speak.
Of course, we have no intention of posting Miss Trambeau's ring-a-ling digits. Your Mama could not in a thousand years subject just any curious person who might make an impromptu call to the often agitated, always saucy (and usually sauced up) Fiona Trambeau. Our Fiona would probably pee with glee were Mister Stoudemire to actually ring her telephone bell but–trust chickens–that crafty beehawtch would figure out a way to transmit mortal violence through the phone wires were just any ol' person who isn't Mister Stoudemaire to call because they thought it would be cute to chat up Fiona Trambeau. Besides, she'll never read this. Fiona does do celebrities but she absolutely does not do celebrity real estate, so she'll never know. She's probably already forget she asked us to post the damn number anyways.
Between a lathered up Fiona Trambeau and a few easily accessed articles on the interweb, we did finally learn all sorts of things including that Mister Stoudemire was a late bloomer to basketball. He only started passing and shooting in organized leagues at age 14. He took to the sport elementally and advanced quickly to become one of the best high-school ball players in all of the state of Florida. It's not clear to Your Mama if Mister Stoudemire ever finished college or even matriculated and, honestly, either way it's irrelevant to our tale of real estate highs and lows. What we did confirm is that in 2002, when just a young but tall ball player of 19 or 20 years old, Mister Stoudemire was drafted by the Phoenix Suns for whom he pounded the hardwoods to great acclaim and award with his hard and powerful 6'10" frame until sometime in 2010.
At that point, in early 2010, the accomplished ball player signed the necessary papers to switch his professional affiliations over to the New York Knicks who, according to some reports, were so hot and bothered to sign the then 27 year old 5-time All-Star player they agreed to pony up just shy of $100,000,000 over the course a five year contract. One hundred million dollars, puppies, and that's not counting the additional multi-millions he can easily rake in each year from endorsement deals and the many more potential millions from his outside-basketball business endeavors that include a record label (Hypocalypto) and a recent assist to fashion designer Rachel Roy to create a limited line of ladies clothing described as "court side apparel for the fashion-forward female."
Now children, Your Mama don't know a perspiring glass of swate tay from a god damn tater tot but we do know enough about the business of women's garmentry to make the uneducated judgement that Rachel Roy knows a thing or two about how to dress a gal on the go with a yen for clean-lined sophistication and a modest budget. However, children, in our itty-bitty pea brain, that edging-on-wanton description of the Roy/Stoudemire clothing collaboration describes something rather more dire sounding, an habiliment short on yardage and probably a little bit (too) tight and/or one-sleeved, something that aches to be worn with either a pair of sky-high porn pumps with girlish ankle-socks or some sort of faux-sporty wedge-heeled sneaker-style situation that makes a twisted mockery of both the high heel and the hard working athletic shoe.
Anyhoodles poodles, in addition to spending a few million for a new (mc)mansion in Southwest Florida, Mister Stoudemire has recently divested himself of a number of other properties at considerable financial loss, a magnificent sell-off that may (or may not) have something to do with budget concerns. Simmer down, buckaroos. We're not saying Mister Stoudemire's broke or anything like that. We certainly ain't privy to the particulars of Mister Stoudemire's pocketbook and we make no claims as to his net worth, income and other cash flow, complete list of assets and/or cash reserves (or lack thereof). We're just saying there sometimes comes a time in a very young and filthy rich man's life–maybe a time like when an all-but-ruined 2011 season could, by his own account, keep about twenty million George Washingtons from walking their way into his coffers–when it's prudent and wise to prune the property tree to ease up on the amount of dough required to maintain, make the mortgages and pay the rent on more than half a dozen high-priced properties on both coasts and in between.
At one point in the not so distant past, before he acquired the (pseudo-)palatial pile in Southwest Ranches (FL), the property portfolio of the now New York-based power forward and center ballooned with a leased a pied-a-terre in a Donald Trump-developed complex in White Plains, NY (near where the Knicks training grounds are located), a pricy penthouse in downtown Manhattan (NY), and a house in the Hollywood Hills (CA). He also owned a sexed-up penthouse in Miami Beach plus a pair of adjacent condos in a fancy building in Phoenix, AZ as well as three high-priced and high-maintenance single-family (mc)mansions, also in Phoenix.
Before we get Mister Stoudemire's portfolio thinning, let's first take a brief spin through Mister Stoudemire's most recent real estate acquisition, the aforementioned mansion in Southwest Ranches, FL he picked up last month for, as per property records and previous reports, $3,700,000.
A quick consult with our high-tech atlas shows this Southwest Ranches place is 35 miles northwest of South Beach, 25 miles or so southwest of the beaches of Fort Lauderdale and just a few short miles from where Flahreeduh's Escalade-saturated suburban civilization turns to the swampy, alligator-infested Everglades.
Listing information for sprawling single-story mcmansion shows it sits on 2.33 gated and landscaped acres in the Landmark Ranch Estates enclave, measures in at a considerable 14,555 square feet and includes a total of 6 bedrooms and 6.5 bathrooms.
A dead-straight pavered driveway leads from the street to a perfectly harrowing porte cochere held aloft by six round columns and bizarrely topped by a petite cupola. Etched glass front doors open to a marble-floored foyer that steps down to the formal living room complete with fireplace, built-in bar area, and a swimming pool view from a wall of towering windows. A short corridor off the living room opens to a library, small home office, 4-car garage and the master suite.
A butler's pantry connects the formal dining room to the family quarters, a large laundry room and the colossal kitchen complete with commercial-grade appliances and more faux-antiqued, totally custom, no doubt shockingly expensive, eggshell-colored cabinetry adorned with copious corbels and other carved details than we've ever had the misfortune of seeing in one kitchen at one time. A door in the kitchen leads directly into another attached 4-car garage and a wide snack counter separates the kitchen itself from an approximately 800-square foot family room/breakfast area.
The adjacent state-of-the-art home theater done up by the sellers–a man who made some of his money selling aggressively banal "art" on cruise ships–like a god damn bordello with blood red shag carpeting, red and black patterned fabric-covered walls, carved wood pilasters and nine jet black recliner-style theater seats with built-in cup holders. We get the desire for decorative drama and a spot of cliché Hollywood glamor in a home movie theater, but lowerd have mercy, no.
Three family bedrooms pinwheel around a playroom space and share three bathrooms in a separate wing off the kitchen/family room complex. The master suite occupies it's own private wing at the opposite end of the house and includes a large bedroom and sitting area with built-in entertainment center, a wall of windows and French doors that open to a covered veranda, two bedroom-sized walk-in closets, a separate exercise room, and a super-sized beige marble bathroom with twin vanities, his and her enclosed crapper cubicles–hers has a bee-day too–and a jetted soaking tub for two and separate double-entry shower.
An outdoor (but covered) summer kitchen connects the main house to an entertainment pavilion/guest house comprised of 2 bedrooms, 1 bathrooms and an almost 600-square foot living/billiard room with stone tile flooring, soaring ceiling, and a carved wood built-in wet bar with more than enough shelf space and cabinetry to please even the most hardcore booze hound.
Rooms at the rear of the residence give out to about 3,000 square feet of deep and wide covered veranda space that includes various lounging and dining areas as the previously mentioned a fully-equipped summer kitchen complete with sinks, refrigerators, warming ovens, and even an Fiat-sized ice maker which sound absurdly huge until you remember that it gets obscenely hot and humid in Florida and a commercial-grade ice maker is, as Marthat Stewart famously said, "a good thing." The stone tile flooring continues beyond the veranda and summer kitchen areas to surround a free-form, lagoon-style swimming pool with party-sized spa and faux-rock formation with swirling water slide.
Beyond the swimming pool area there's some vegetated gardens and lawns that give way to a narrow, sad little canal that looks in aerial images like a breeding ground for mosquitoes and other flying vermin.
Stay tuned for part two during which we'll discuss the many and various other properties Mister Stoudemire has recently sold at a hair raising loss.
listing photos: Coldwell Banker Residential Real Estate / Weston Town Center via Planomatic
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