9255 Doheny Road., West Hollywood, California
Bordering Beverly Hills north of Sunset Boulevard sits the Sierra Towers. It’s no great that L.A.’s rich and famous (& celebrities) have long been drawn to the sexy, glass-walled condominiums at the Sierra Towers, a striking example of 1960s minimalist architecture. Former high-profile residents of the 31-story high-rise include George Hamilton, Sidney Poitier, David Geffen and music icon Sir Elton John, who owned a characteristically glammy two-unit combination on the 20th floor that he sold in 2012 for a tad more than $4.6 million. Hollywood veteran Diahann Carroll has long called the full-service building home, as have Beverly Hills socialite Nikki Haskell, rocker PJ Harvey and ever-saucy octogenarian Joan Collins who, in 2008, paid $2.7 million for her high-floor spread, owned in the mid-1990s by musicvideo sexpot Tawny Kitaen.
In the past few years, the building has been particularly jam-packed with name-brand occupants who, more often than not, buy and sell in secretive off-market deals. No units are currently listed on the open market, but an impeccably placed real estate birdie tells us the tony tower’s only duplex — a two-unit combination previously owned by Vincent Gallo and, more recently, Cher — is being shopped around as a whisper listing with an asking price between $5.6 million and $5.9 million. The scuttlebutt is that the businesswoman owner originally planned to combine the duplex with an adjacent unit, but instead quietly sold the third unit in November 2014 to superstar real-estate broker Kurt Rappaport, who quickly flipped it in late January in another off-market transaction to jewelry designer Loree Rodkin, a longtime Sierra Towers resident who had, just a week or so before, sold her 3,500-square-foot, two-unit combo in yet another off-market deal for $8 million to smallscreen royalty Mary Hart and Burt Sugarman.
Implacable real estate yenta Yolanda Yakketyyak says she’s one million percent positive that at just about the same time last spring when Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne made a $4 million off-market deal for a three-bedroom spread on one of the lower floors, Sandra Bullock pulled the trigger on a completely under-the-radar multimillion-dollar purchase of a midfloor corner unit once owned by Matthew Perry, whose former “Friends” co-star Courteney Cox currently owns not one but two neighboring units on a higher floor that she surreptitiously picked up in a couple of down-low deals — one in 2011, the other in the fall of 2014 — that totaled $4.55 million.
Besides all the showbizzy sorts who inhabit Sierra Towers, there are also a slew of influential businessmen who own there, including tech tycoon-turned-philanthropist David Bohnett, shoe and handbag designer-turned-Platinum Triangle mansion developer Bruce Makowsky and Canadian magnate Robert Herjavec, an investor panelist on “Shark Tank” and a current contestant on “Dancing With the Stars,” who in January 2015 coughed up $3.15 million for his mid-floor unit. Billionaire financier Tom Gores still holds property in the building, while his brother, Paradigm Talent Agency chairman Sam Gores, sold his condo last year for $3.1 million to big-time book editor Judith Regan. Private investor and philanthropist Nicolas Berggruen — a man who used to be described in the press as the “homeless billionaire” because he lived in hotels and didn’t own a home — is rumored in property circles to have hoovered up at least seven units in the building over the past couple of years at a cost in excess of $17 million, and several real estate magpies we gabbed with swear thirtysomething Pabst Brewing Co. co-CEO Evan Metropoulos also owns at least five units, including both penthouses, one he picked up in 2010 for $10 million and the other covertly snatched just a couple of months ago for $17.2 million.
Courtesy of VanityFair
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