Livin' Large Wit Damon Dash: UPDATE

Your Mama has updated the photos for the Daman Dash property...have a look see here.

The Six Degrees of Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos

SELLER: Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos
LOCATION: 76 Crosby Street, New York City
PRICE: $6,700,000 (sale price)
SIZE: 5,262 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 3,5 bathrooms
DESCRIPTION: DRAMATIC FULL FLOOR LOFT AT THE EPICENTER OF SOHO...Grand proportioned living and entertaining space, exceptionally appointed eat-in kitchen with 2 Sub Zero fridges, double Gaggenau ovens, double Gaggenau cook tops and a walk-in pantry. Separate family wing with two generous sized bedrooms and playroom, corner light surround the library/den, office and small gym, 2.5 baths with fabulous finishes and a rain forest imbued master bath.

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Settle down children. Your Mama knows this apartment sold some time ago. The story was was well reported in Max Abelson's column at the NY Observer and subsequently Curbed posted several times about it. So all you snotty children don't be sending us uppity emails about how this is old news. We know.

We decided to dig this one up from our archives for three reasons. The first is that many of our readers who do not live in the New York City area may not have read these earlier reports. Secondly, after yesterday's depressing posts on the Pirro pads, Your Mama needed to be looking at pretty pictures and a floor plan we can appreciate. And lastly we are digging this one up because there are heaps of celebrities who can be woven into the story of this one apartment. So hang on tight and see if you can follow because Your Mama is going to be name dropping left and right.

Ex-soap opera stud Mark Consuelos and his talking head wife Kelly Ripa purchased their full floor loft at 76 Crosby in January 2002 for around $2,800,000 and reportedly spent and additional $900,000 customizing and renovating. The loft is quite large at over 5,000 square feet, but as anyone who has ever seen that upsetting Regis and Kelly gab fest knows, this catalog model cute couple have bred like rabbits and it wasn't long before they were crammed into the loft with three young kiddies like Japanese businessmen on a bullet train. The floor plan may be well considered and laid out, but there is certainly no room for three small brats and their nannies to be living up in here.

Upstairs, in the tremendous 9,865 square foot penthouse that is rumored to have once belonged to Boris Becker, porcelain skinned ack-tress Nicole Kidman luxuriated all by her lonesome. For all that space she reportedly paid the queenly sum of $40,000 per month in rent. Yes, children, in rent. Prior to moving to 76 Crosby, the pin thin Academy Award winning Australian was shacking up in Lenny Kravitz's penthouse down the street at 30 Crosby. That is until they busted up and she needed another place to get her beauty sleep.

However, Kidman didn't stay at 76 Crosby long. She next moved to Chelsea and into the very same building Your Mama keeps an apartment. Building rumors had her paying around $30,000 for a 2 or 3 bedroom apartment. Another rumor that flashed around was that Kidman did not herself live in the Chelsea building but rather had purchased an apartment in the building for her assistant. Whatever the case, Your Mama frequently saw this super skinny-minny in the early mornings slipping out of the building, usually in a pair of sweatpants, and into the back seat of a black Suburban. And on more than one occasion we saw Kidman, a bodyguard, and the two children she shares with that strange Scientologist Tom Cruise skulking down the street trying to look inconspicuous. We have not seen Ms. Kidman around lately so we gather she's moved on to another location.

Kidman's moving around puzzled New York City real estate watchers as it is widely known she purchased an apartment in the one of the Meier glass towers on Perry Street and the West Side Highway. This is the same building where hotelier Ian Schraeger keeps a full flor apartment and Calvin Klein purchased the 9,856 square foot triplex penthouse. All reports stated Ms. Kidman never moved into the Meier building apartment and many reported she was trying to sell the place. However, property records show a 12th floor unit (with 3,785 square feet) in the South tower is currently owned by Kidman's considerably less successful actor sister Antonia Hawley. Your Mama asks the children to draw your own conclusions about this.

Meanwhile, back over at 76 Crosby Street, the 5,292 square foot third floor loft was purchased in March of 2005 by Miramax mogul Harvey Weinstein. Property records show both Harvey and Eve Weinstein as owners. However, this puzzles Your Mama as the Weinstein's publicly divorced in 2004 and Eve was granted ownership of the couples exceptionally large duplex apartment on the fourth and fifth floors at 88 Central Park West. In October of 2006 Eve sold the duplex to Robert DeNiro and his long time lady friend Grace Hightower for the impressive price of $20,900,000 (the asking price had been $25,000,000).

Incidentally, Sting and Trudy Styler also own a mammoth duplex at 88 Central Park West they have on the market for $24,000,000. Your Mama will be posting this apartment in the near future. Reports say this couple will be moving to the Robert A.M. Stern designed building at 15 Central Park West once construction has been completed.

Are the children following us? We're nearly back to the Consuelos/Ripa loft. Soon after Ms. Kidman vacated 76 Crosby, the enormous duplex penthouse was put on the market for $9,950,000. As it turns out Consuelos and Ripa were looking to move to a larger property to house their growing brood and had put their fifth floor unit on the market in February 2005 for $7,750,000. Recognizing their good luck and the simplicity of moving upstairs, they quickly snapped up the penthouse in June of 2005.

Also in June 2005, the couple slashed the price of their loft by $800,000. The lower price quickly attracted a buyer and the loft sale closed in early November for $6,700,000. The unit was purchased by Edward Scheetz, who among other business interests, is the CEO of the Morgans Hotel Group, the umbrella company for Ian Schrager's collection of high end hotels which include the Delano in Miami and the Mondrian in Los Angeles.

UPDATE: One of our lovely readers commented that he/she actually looked to purchase the Consuelos/Ripa apartment when it was for sale and says it was "SO nice." He/she also tells us the family currently lives uptown while their new penthouse at 76 Crosby undergoes a gut renovation.

Phew! That concludes our whirlly-gig tour on the six degrees of the Consuelos/Ripa apartment. Your Mama is worn out and we're headed for our big king sized Tempur-Pedic bed to curl up and have a nap with our bitches Linda and Beverly.

Sources: NY Magazine, NY Observer, NY Post, Curbed

The Vacation House of Pirro

SELLER: Jeanine and Albert Pirro
LOCATION: West Palm Beach, FL
PRICE: $795,000 (taxes: $12,274/year and association dues: $6,624/year)
SIZE: 3,892 square feet, 4 bedroom, 3.5 bathrooms
DESCRIPTION: (considerably reduced from listing agent's website)...Private Master suite is graciously appointed with 6-paneled doors, His & Hers fitted walk-in closets with mirrored doors, plus a separate side closet...13 x 10 ft. sitting room off the master bedroom provides a bright room with additional space for reading, your computer needs, or just simply relaxing...Master Bathroom provides two separate room with separate vanities, commode, and dual shower entry...Glass block in master bath maximizes the natural light over the roman tub surrounded by 20" floor tiles and "her" separate vanity with knee space/make-up sitting area.

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Here we are down in West Palm Beach checking out the vacation home of Jeanine and Albert Pirro. Once again, because we're dealing with the property of a couple of high-powered attornies, we want to state for the record what you're reading here is our opinon.

As many of you know from our last posting, Your Mama was stupefied and practically speechless regarding the Pirros' puzzling and offensive primary residence up in Westchester County, just North of New York City. And as you might imagine from the photos, Your Mama is no more impressed with their vacation home which is located about eight miles from the ocean in The Breakers West development on Okeechobee Boulevard .

According The Breakers West Realty Corporation website, the development lays claim to a Rees Jones golf course and a relationship with the elegant and famous oceanfront Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach. Your Mama vehemently opposes living in housing developments like this Breakers West place, but by all accounts, the development is meant to be high class, hunny. We're not convinced.

In addition to the astronomical quarterly maintenance ($1,656/quarter in the case of the Pirro property), owners can purchase several additional memberships which allow them access to various high-priced amenities. For example, an "Ocean Membership" entitles you to such luxuries as complimentary access to the beach and pools at The Breakers Beach Club, complimentary greens fees and tennis court time, and of course, complimentary parking at the clubs. All this for the bargain price of $12,000 per year with a required membership deposit of $125,000. Your Mama does not know if the Pirros have enhanced their vacation lifestyle with any of the additional memberships, but we suspect they have. Just call it a hunch.

Anyhoo, the sheer decorative spectacle of the Pirros' Harrison house has, oddly enough, been replaced by an aggressive banality at their Florida hideaway. As we scanned the photographs, it took a few moments before we realized this property is indeed just as distressing as their Harrison house and there are a few items we'd like to point out that Your Mama finds in particularly bad taste.

Number One: The carpet. Little upsets Your Mama more than seeing acres of beige carpeting. This crime, made worse by it's being laid up in a damned tract house, is inexcusable in the home of a rich person, even if it is their second home.

Number Two: Those dining room chairs. These things not only fail at bringing the outside in, they make Your Mama's mouth go dry and have us headed straight to the liquor cabinet. When have the children seen anything so visually insulting pulled up to a dining room table?

Number three: The mammoth photograph of the Pirro-ettes hanging above the credenza in the living room. This tremendous photograph stopped Your Mama's eyes dead in their tracks. We have always found over-sized photographs of children, with their too pressed outfits and fake grins, to have a lurid quality that makes us edgy and uncomfortable.

Number four: The draperies. If only Your Mama was the Queen of the Curtains, banishment of this sort of swagged window treatment would be our first order of bizness. Are these swooping things supposed to be elegantly casual or casually elegant? Whatever they case, they serve no practical purpose, make Your Mama's skin crawl, and ought to be taken out with yesterday's trash.

If Your Mama did not know better, we would be sucked in by the photo of the swimming pool with the lovely water view. However, a quick look at an aerial shot of the development and we see this wee body of water is basically a man-made swamp. For all those that have never been to Florida in the summer, this swamp is no doubt a breeding ground for mosquitoes which makes lounging by that pool nearly impossible without being doused in DDT.

What Your Mama finds most upsetting about both Pirro properties is simple enough. This couple clearly has money to burn and could easily afford to hire a decorator to come in and give them tasteful and rich looking environments. But instead they choose this wild excess that channels Victoria Gotti when they could have had the places done up the esteemed and talented Bunny Williams.

As of today, Tuesday, February 20, 2007, Your Mama has no information on why the Pirro couple is liquidating their real estate assets. Perhaps there are debts to pay. Maybe they're looking for a fresh start, or as is widely rumored there could be a dee-vorce in the near future. Your Mama will certainly give the children and update when and if we hear anything.

Sources: Breakers West Realty Corporation