Tom Gores Puts Big Number on Unfinished L.A. Estate

SELLER: Tom and Holly Gores
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $50,000,000
SIZE: 3.13 acres plus an unfinished 28,619 square feet mansion

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: It has come to Your Mama's attention via covert communique from Curious Candy that self-made multi-billionaire private equity tycoon and hardcore real estate baller Tom Gores has—much to this property gossip's surprise—hoisted a not-yet finished mega-mansion on over three acres above the hoity-toity Bel Air Country Club on the open market with a s$50,000,000 price tag.

As downright serious as the $50 million asking price may be, Your Mama suggests the feint of financial heart steel themselves with a nerve pill and buckle their real estate safety belts because the sky high price tag is far less than Mister Gores spent to buy the supremely situated and nicely elevated spread that provides sweeping city views.

Our research indicates the lavish living financier—who is said to have once had a torrid affair with his brother's now ex-wife and, in 2011, bought the Detroit Pistons professional basketball team—purchased the first of the two parcels that comprise the existing 3.13 acre estate property in November 2008 for $18,000,000. At the time the approximately 1.5 acre spread had a 7,247 square foot mini-mansion that appears in aerial imagery to have been razed.

The following January (2009) Mister Gores shelled out another $38 million for the neighboring property and its 11,400 square foot Mediterranean mansion which once belonged to motion picture colorizing pioneer Herbert Kalmus and was later owned by Verna Harrah, the wealthy widow of hotel and casino magnate Bill Harrah.*

A few quick clickety-clacks on Your Mama's bejeweled abacus shows that Mister Gores spent a $56 million to acquire the two properties and heaven only knows how many millions more on planning, permits, and construction.

Aerial imagery suggest the Mister Gores and his team of architects and designers opted to work with the basic framework of the existing Kalmus/Harrah/Parmer mansion and, at the very least, added a substantial (if partially finished) subterranean wing. Current listing digital marketing materials show the 3.13 acre property has already been graded and the existing residential structure measures 28,619 square feet with a total allowable square footage of somewhere around forty thousand.

The site plan (included with online listings) show a gated main entrance, a second (also gated) service entrance, a prairie-sized motor court, and at least one ancillary structure of considerable size. There looks to be an existing, sizable pool house next to the existing swimming pool, various garden areas, meandering pathways, and, nested into the steep slope below a soccer pitch-sized patch of grass, a half-court basketball court.

Although it appears now Mister Gores will not complete construction on his dream mega-mansion the man is hardly homeless in Los Angeles. In November 2010, according to property records, a corporate entity the links to an address associated with Mister Gores paid fitness guru Bill Phillips $21,000,000 for a 3-ish acre estate with an 18,000-ish square foot mansion in the guard-gated and architecturally steroidal Beverly Park community. Mister Gore's fat property portfolio of private residences also includes (but is hardly limited to) an ocean front residence in Malibu and two side-by-side river front residences in Grosse Ile, MI, a swanky suburb of depressed Detroit.**

*The Widda Harrah sold the estate in 2005 for $14,900,000 to a corporate entity that most of us property gossips believe was controlled by radio and television tycoon Henry Carlson "Carl" Parmer, Jr who then sold it on for $38 million to another corporate entity tied to Mister Gores.

**For a more detailed (although not necessarily complete) outline of Mister Gores' residential real estate empire have a look see at Your Mama's 2011 run down of his holdings.

aerial site plan: The Agency

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