Former Disney CEO Michael Eisner is listing his cliffside Malibu estate for $225 million – and a price anywhere close would be the most expensive home sold in the history of California.
The 25,000-square-foot Mediterranean-style compound spans five acres and includes nine buildings linked by gardens and courtyards on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, the Wall Street Journal reported.
A deal anywhere near his asking price would set a sales record in California, set less than six month ago with the $177 million paid for a seven-acre Malibu spread by venture capitalist Marc Andreessen and his wife, Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen, who have since bought two more properties along the beach.
The Eisner compound designed by Robert A.M. Stern is on the Encinal bluff above a tiny beach known as Watkins Cove, according to listing agent Kurt Rappaport of Westside Estate Agency. It has a beachfront cabana reached by a cliff-side elevator.
Rappaport said the lofty price tag on the Eisner property is warranted because the compound would be nearly impossible to duplicate today in terms of scale, location and beach access.
The 16-bedrooms, 28-bath property is reminiscent of old estates along France’s Côte d’Azur, he said. Limestone rubble walls, exposed rough timber framing and antique terracotta roof tiles add to its hill-town character.
Its steel casement windows and doors are a California riff on its Mediterranean revival of the 1920s and 1930s.
The meandering Malibu compound includes a gym, several guesthouses, an office, and a two-bedroom caretaker’s cottage. A swimming pool overlooks the Pacific Ocean. An underground tunnel from the pool area leads to a large movie theater.
Eisner and his wife, Jane Eisner, bought a piece of land on the bluffs in the mid-1990s and have been adding adjacent parcels since then, Rappaport told the newspaper. The estate now comprises at least five separate parcels, records show.
The Eisners commissioned Stern, an architect known for designing New York City buildings such as 15 Central Park West, to design the property. The compound was created over the decades and completed in 2020.
Eisner is selling because he “loves the creative process” and wants to find another project, Rappaport said.
His property portfolio includes a ranch in Snowmass, Colo., a mansion in Bel-Air and an apartment on New York’s Upper East Side, records show. The 80-year-old media- and entertainment-industry veteran served as chief executive of Disney from 1984 to 2005.
He now heads the investment firm the Tornante Company, through which he owns Britain’s Portsmouth Football Club.
Other Malibu homes have sold for soaring sums in recent years. In 2018, a Richard Meier-designed estate owned by Hard Rock Cafe founder Peter Morton sold for $110 million. https://therealdeal.com/la/2018/04/24/hard-rock-founders-malibu-mansion-nabs-title-of-priciest-home-sale-in-la-county/
[Wall Street Journal] – Dana Bartholomew
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