A Los Angeles compound that includes the musician Rod Stewart’s former home has sold to two separate buyers for a total of $86 million.
The sellers are Bradley Bell, executive producer and head writer of the long-running daytime soap opera “The Bold and the Beautiful,” and his wife, former diplomat Colleen Bell. They bought the house from Stewart for $6.25 million in 1992.
The roughly 6-acre compound is being divided into two sections and sold separately. The bigger of the two parcels—a roughly 4-acre lot that includes the main house—was sold to David Zander, a television, commercial and film producer for about $57 million.
The remaining parcel, with a circa-1911 cabin on it, has been sold to Nick Kaiser, co-founder of the private-equity firm Marlin Equity Partners for about $29 million.
Zander has a penchant for storied real estate: He previously bought, renovated and sold Lasata, the circa-1917 Hamptons estate where Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis spent childhood summers.
Neither Zander or Kaiser responded to a request for comment.
Designed in 1925 by Montecito architect George Washington Smith, one of the masters of the Spanish Colonial Revival style in Southern California, the property’s main 17,000-square-foot, six-bedroom Spanish Colonial-style home was built for Henry Kern, a retired distillery entrepreneur, and his wife, Elsa Mary Kern. The Kerns were tough clients for Smith, forcing him to redesign the property several times and to include greater levels of ornamentation than was his usual style, according to “The Legendary Estates of Beverly Hills,” a book by the late real-estate agent Jeff Hyland.
When the Bells bought the main house, they were newly married and in their 20s; Bradley had been making a name for himself in Hollywood producing “The Bold and the Beautiful.”
“I don’t know that we could really even afford it,” said Colleen. The property required a lot of work, but the house reminded them of Bradley’s childhood vacation home on Wisconsin’s Lake Geneva, where the pair met as teenagers when Colleen’s parents rented the house next door.
They spent two years renovating and restoring the house. Stewart, who bought the house in the 1970s, had added art nouveau-style features, including a disco room. The Bells removed those elements and restored as many original details as possible, uncovering the coffered ceilings and removing marble floors to reveal the original tiles.
“Of course, it took longer than we anticipated and cost more than we thought it would,” said Colleen, who served as U.S. Ambassador to Hungary under President Obama and is now director of the California Film Commission.
“We just hoped that the [television] work would continue and we’d be able to pay our bills, which it did, and the show stayed on the air.” The drama, which started in 1987, has been running for 38 seasons.
In 2004, the Bells bought the longtime home of the actor Gregory Peck for $19.5 million, razing the Peck home and merging the properties into one roughly 6-acre compound.
The couple had a longstanding friendship with Peck and his wife Veronique Peck; they all frequently had dinner together.
“When Brad and I moved in, they had left a beautiful little Poinsettia plant with a handwritten note that said, ‘Dear Colleen and Brad, welcome to the ‘hood,’” Colleen said. After Peck died in 2003, Veronique approached the Bells and asked if they’d like to purchase the property.
The Bells weren’t planning to sell, but were approached several times by Zander’s agent. “We said, ‘OK, we’ll just show them around,’” Colleen said. “Then, one thing led to another, and we started to think about it.” The Bells raised their four children in the house, so selling the property is “poignant,” she said.
Zander wasn’t interested in the entire property, however, so the Bells’ agent, Ben Bacal of Revel Real Estate, brought in Kaiser to take the rest. The sale has taken more than a year to complete because of the complexities of subdividing the property, Bacal said.
Drew Fenton of Carolwood Estates represented Zander.
Story courtesy of Wall Street Journal
