Buckle up your safety belts, children, and pour yourselves a tall and stiff gin & tonic because according to the hard-working celebrity real estate gals over at The Wall Street Journal, showbiz widow Candy Spelling is finally, at long last, about to unload The Manor, her 56,500 square foot limestone-clad beast of a mansion in the hoity-toity Holmby Hills area of Los Angeles that's been on the market for-fookin-evuh with a sanity defying asking price of $150,000,000.
The Wall Street Journal reports the soon-to-be new owner of preposterously gargantuan Manor to be the 22-year old Petra Ecclestone, the exceedingly pampered daughter of Formula One racing mogul Bernie Ecclestone. Apparently, Miss Ecclestone plans to split her time between London and Los Angeles after her upcoming nuptials to an international gadabout and entrepreneur named James Stunt. A sale price has yet–as far as we know–to be released, revealed or snitched.
Followers of the international real estate scene recall that it was only in December of 2010 that Miss Ecclestone, presumably with a financial leg up from her generous father, paid a mind melting £56,000,000 for Sloane House, a redonkulously large mansion near London's swank Sloane Square. That's $91,151,800 at today's rates according to Your Mama's currency conversion contraption so it's not like these Ecclestone's are afraid of or strangers to coughing up more than a hundred million clams for a private residence.
Far be it for little ol' Your Mama to question the mighty Wall Street Journal lion but, interestingly, when we queried one of our better-connected sources inside the Platinum Triangle real estate beltway–one who has typically has frighteningly accurate information–we were rather cryptically told the buyer is, in fact, not young and dewy Miss Ecclestone but rather, "Someone else more wealthy...one of the richest in the world!" Make of that what you will, children.
According to listing information, Miz Spelling's multi-winged faux-French mega-mansion sits on 5 manicured acres that butt up against the uppity Los Angles Country Club and features 14 bedrooms and 27 bathrooms, a hotel-lobby sized formal living room that doubles as a projection room, a banquet hall-sized formal dining room, oak-paneled library, office, billiard room–breathe, breathe, breathe–a game room, two-lane bowling alley, wine cellar with tasting room, not one but several gift wrapping rooms, china and silver storage, a beauty salon and barber shop, doll museum, art studio and fitness room.
The vast house also includes extensive staff and service quarters and covered parking spaces for 16 cars plus room for 100 more along the double drive and in the prairie-sized motor court. The grounds, which we can assure the children cost more to water and maintain each year than most teacher's earn in an entire year, include party-tent friendly lawns, savannah-sized terraces, a swimming pool complex and a tennis court that we can't imagine Miz Spelling has ever even stepped foot on let alone used.
Miz Spelling will downsize into an approximately 16,000 square foot duplex penthouse at the recently completed Century tower in Century City. Early reports suggested she paid $47,000,000 for the penthouse but more recent later reports indicated that a tanked real estate market brought the actual sale price down to $35,000,000.
UPDATE: Gossip juggernaut TMZ now reports that young and brassy Miss Ecclestone settled for Miz Spelling's south of Sunset Boulevard mega-mansion as a second choice since what she really wanted was wealthy divorcée Suzanne Saperstein's $125,000,000 Fleur de Lys,north of Sunset Boulevard just a few blocks away. It's not clear, according to TMZ, why Miss Ecclestone was unable to secure Miz Sap's Frenchified mega-mansion but when she–or, more likely, her father's people–were unable to put a big deal together she shifted gears and bought Miz Spelling's even larger and more expensive but less authentically "French" house.
Stay tuned, puppies, this real estate tale continues to unfold...
aerial photo (top): Pacific Coast News
listing photos: Coldwell Banker / Hilton & Hyland
