Sidney Kimmel Kashes In

SELLER: Sidney Kimmel
LOCATION: S. Ocean Boulevard, Palm Beach, FL
PRICE: $81,500,000
SIZE: 32,316 square feet (total), 6 bedrooms, 12 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Jeezis, Mary and Joseph, some of you children really twist us up like a damn pretzel. So before one of you moe-rons work Your Mama's last frazzled nerve and force us to lay out a serious beat down (and you just might be surprised who we'd go after with our wooden spoon first), let's just move on to another pricey Palm Beach property that has hit the market with a scorching hot price tag...an $81,500,000 price tag to be exact.

Hold on to your design expectation boots though because the ocean front mansion, owned by Jones Apparel Company founder turned filthy rich film producer Sidney Kimmel (Nine and a Half Weeks, Blame it on Rio, Charlie Bartlett, Lars and the Real Girl, The Kite Runner), is most assuredly not one of those palatial Palm Beach piles designed in the 1920s by high society architects Addison Mizner or Maurice Fatio, but rather a leviathan limestone edifice designed in the mid-1990s by New York based and high fallutin' French born architect Thierry Despont.

For those few children who don't know who Thierry Despont is, let Your Mama provide a five second education: In addition to being the gentleman responsible for the centennial restoration of the Statue of Liberty and the designer for the interior galleries of the much bally-hooed J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the egotastic architect has built a big bizness designing and decorating lavish mansions only exceeded in size by the big egos of his big bank account bizness baron clients like super-billionaire Bill Gates, J. Crew CEO Mickey Drexler, shamed Canadian newspaper mogul Conrad Black, and The Limited's Leslie Wexner, who was dragging around a good looking and well built male assistant and some seriously blue hair the last time Your Mama was in the same room with him.

Anyhoo, way back in July of 1993, property records reveal that Mister Kimmel paid just $5,500,000 for the 4.27 acre property with 316 feet of ocean front on a particularly swanky stretch of S. Ocean Boulevard often referred to as Billionaires Row. Mister Kimmel had much larger real estate ambitions than the residence that stood on the property and he unceremoniously bull dozed the existing structures in order to make way for his tremendous Thierry Despont designed digs, a turn of events that surely left all the old-school Lily Pulitzer clad mummies in Palm Beach scandalized and clutching their frail hearts. Rumors, reports, and real estate press releases say Mister Kimmel spent the next 5 or six years and an eye popping and almost unbelievable 30 to 40 million clams erecting his ocean front dream house.

Now then, let's get out our bejeweled calculators and work some of our fuzzy math children. If those numbers are to be believed, our real estate savvy Mister Kimmel is in to his winter palace for 35 to 45 million smackers for the buy and build. Let's just say that, conservatively, it costs him another couple million each year in taxes, insurance and maintenance (his tax bill alone was $517,775 in 2007 according the the Palm Beach Appraiser), then Your Mama figures he's got about $55-65,000,000 total into this place. Using those mostly made up numbers, Mister Kimmel stands to pocket $15-25,000,000 if the property sells for anywhere near the asking price, a hefty return considering he's also had seven years usage and enjoyment of the resort like estate.

Property records indicate the chunky and formidable residence with its walls of glass measures 18,437 square feet. Press materials and multiple reports indicate the house sprawls across more than 26,000 square feet, and additional records show the property with 32,316 square feet of total square footage. All those different numbers leave Your Mama perplexed and befuddled about what the actual square footage is, so let's just say that it's ginormous and probably 8 or 10 times the size of your house.

Although Monsieur Despont conceives and constructs undeniably meticulous, sybaritic, and extraordinarily well considered structures for extraordinarily rich individuals, we personally think the exterior of Mister Kimmel's krib feels more than a little civic and the interiors too Four Seasons Hotel for our particular taste. Don't mistake Your Mama children, there ain't nuthin' wrong with a gorgeously designed county courthouse or being pampered at a Four Seasons hotel, and we are well aware that this property is just about as dee-luxe and well appointed as they come. In fact it's practically begging for a bevy of Architectural Digest editors to fly in, photograph and coo over the unflinching extravagance in a glossy and glowing article. It's just not working our happy spots, you know?

Without a doubt the 26 foot high atrium defines the central hub of the house where 34 gigantic rib cage-like Honduran mahogany beams form an undulating and momentous canopy over head. At the touch of a button, what is essentially an exceptionally luxurious covered porch is created when a row of six 20' tall glass doors slowly lower into the ground. Did you read that properly children? Those doors lower 20 feet into the damn ground. No matter what you may think of Monsuier Despont or this house, that is some bad ass engineering shit.

Current listing information for the property reveals there are six bedrooms and a whopping 12 bathrooms, which means there are two full time gurls who spend their entire days scrubbing terlits. Reports and press materials also indicate that in addition to the massive main house, there is a 2 bedroom guest house, garaging for five cars, and two pool cabanas, because one pool cabana is simply not enough when you have this kind of money.

Neighbors of Mister Kimmel include prune faced and gravel voiced rock star Rod Stewart, Netscape co-founder Jim Clark, billionaire bizness man Malcolm Glazer, and Terry Allen Kramer, the fantastically rich ladee whom the children will recall booted big haired shock jock Howard Stern from the ocean front house on Southampton's Gin Lane she leased to him so she could sell the place for a whopping $32,750,500. And of course, a few doors down from Mister Kimmel is the spectacular Casa Apava which Revlon Ron (Perelman) sold to house building baron Dwight Schar in 2005 for a staggering and record breaking $70,000,000, plus an additional $22,000,000 for a large lot across the Boulevard that fronts Lake Worth.

One might think that the octogenarian philanthropist, who has impressively and generously donated more that $500,000,000 to charitable causes, was simply scaling back his real estate portfolio, but that does not seem to be the case. Mister Kimmel is reported to own apartments in Los Angeles and New York and he recently forked over a reported $38-40,000,000 for late night television icon Johnny Carson's estate on Wildlife Road on the cliffs of Point Dume in Malee-boo.

UPDATE: Nancy Riordan

Well, we knew it was coming, didn't we? Finally, the LA Times' celebrity real estate high priestess Ruth Ryon is reporting that Nancy Riordan, the estranged wife of former Los Angeles mayor Richard Riordan, did indeed sell her colossal Carbon Beach house just as Your Mama whispered to all the children back on the 11th of February.

However, Miz Ryon reveals that the selling price was not the $50-55,000,000 that Your Mama heard, but rather a spine tingling and staggering $68,000,000.

The 12,785 square foot house sprawls across three lots with more than 200 feet of prime ocean frontage and includes 8 bedrooms and 7 bathrooms according to Miz Ryon.

Hawt damn children, those buyers, who were described to Miz Ryon by local real estate agents as "rich Canadians," must have wanted that house something fierce.

UPDATE: It did not happen. Did y'all hear that? It. Did. Not. Happen.

Weekend Update

1.
All the children who hang around Your Mama's little online endeavor know we've spent way too much time discussing the real estate doings of Rockstar Energy Drink founder Russ Weiner, who currently has three high-priced homes on the market. But we can't help ourselves and we're going to discuss him yet again. A few days ago we saw him shave millions off the asking prices of his two most expensive properties, and this week we saw the third property get a serious asking price haircut too.
Located up on Franklin Avenue in the Hollywood Hills, the four floor flesh colored house now carries an asking price of $2,995,000 and the listing SCREAMS that the current asking price reflects an over all $2,000,000 price reduction since the hillside house first hit the market a very looong time ago.

Your Mama is sure all you Chicken Little's out there are peeing in your pants with happy because you think this proves your point about the real estate sky falling. And maybe it is. However, in our ever so humble opinion, this house was over-priced from the get go, so the gigantic price reduction just brings the price down to where it should have started to begin with. Your Mama thinks we just might see this Weiner dude finally sell one of the big white elephants in his real estate stable.

The 4,400 (approx.) square foot house sports 4 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, and a pool on the roof,. But its saving grace just may be the elevator, because Your Mama would need to be strapped into an oxygen mask in order to be hoofing and hiking up and down all those damn stairs.

2.
Yesterday, gossip juggernaut TMZ reported that on the mental mend Britney Spears was served with legal papers demanding she immediately fork over more than two weeks of unpaid rent (and a $2,100 late fee) on the Malee-boo mansion she leased back in October of 2007. Either that or she needed to "surrender and deliver up possession of said Premises," which is legal-speak for scram, skee-daddle and give the keys back to the landlord.
Mercedes luvvin' Miss Thing leases the Ramirez Canyon Road estate for a reported and rumored $35,000 per month. Unfurnished. Back in early October, when the pop star turned tabloid train wreck was acting like she had a few screws loose, the Malibu Minx whispered in our big ear that Miss Spears signed a 9 month lease with the option to buy. That would indicate she's got at least a few more months to be writing big checks, and Your Mama highly doubts her conservator daddy Jamie will allow her to purchase the 8,500 (approx.) square foot house no matter how much she kicks, screams and whines.

Your Mama has no idea if the single mommy of two was behind in her rent or not, but we have heard through the gossip grapevine that the house is almost entirely without furniture or other such items and that she rarely goes there anymore and stays there overnight even less, which if true makes it a giant waste of money.

TMZ's sources told them that Miss Spears is now current on the rent. Phew! We can all breathe a little easier knowing she'll not be evicted from a house she does not live in.

Photo: Pacific Coast News

3.
All these rumors and reports coming out about Ukrainian bizness woman and noted philanthropist Olena Franchuk spending a blistering and record busting £80,000,000 on a detached house in the super swanky Kensington section of South-West London has become an angry bee in Your Mama's bonnet. Many of the children who have emailed and commented seem to think the reported sale and exorbitant price is nothing more than a fabrication designed to garner publicity for either Miz Franchuk or for Spink Property, the well known and high end developer who has recently executed a major renovation of the five story house on Upper Phillimore Gardens.

Thanks to the entirely legal machinations of an informant we'll call Little Dutch Boy, Your Mama received before and after floor plans (below) for the posh property that were filed with the planning commission of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. As many of those that follow high priced London real estate seem to know, much of the heavy duty engineering for the humongous underground extension with it's indoor swimming pool and interior link from the main house to the mews cottage, car park and garage was indeed undertaken by a previous owner.

However, plans reveal that Spink Property planned to completely gut and reconfigure the underground extension including filling in the old swimming pool, installing another entirely new one, and completely relocating the exterior courtyard, which smartly acts as a light well to the lower level
So kids, if we know that if these Spink people, who do undeniably refined and contemporary work, went through the considerable trouble of such a massive re-configuration of the lower level, then we have to assume they've gone to the same exhaustive and expensive lengths to transform the rest of the house and property with an equally rigorous, sophisticated and pricey architectural program. Your Mama really does not know if Spink's total overhaul justifies an £80,000,000 sale price, but it does show that the house has been totally updated with all the latest gizmos, gadgets and security systems which will appeal to international people with a never ending supply of money to buy up properties at record breaking prices.

Given that Miz Franchuk's huzband Viktor Pinchuk is a billionaire and a major (MAJOR!) contemporary art collector, it does, however, make a certain amount of sense that the modern minded 40-something year old couple might purchase a giant house done over by Spink Property who are well known for fitting old school London properties with all new, extremely expensive and very modern interiors.

None the less, at this point and time, Your Mama has no ability to confirm whether this Franchuk chick really did buy this house for £80,000,000 or any other sum of money. We are, unfortunately, at the information mercy of all the London-based property gossips. That is unless Miss Elton John wants to pick up her Swarovski crystal encrusted princess phone and ring Your Mama with the inside beef about his friend's alleged purchase. We're waiting...

4.
And lets not forget this little tidbit about The White Lady.