Wednesday, November 26, 2008

The Beige Bisno Behemoth in Beverly Park

SELLER: Robert Bisno
LOCATION: Beverly Park Circle, Beverly Hills, CA
PRICE: $29,500,000
SIZE: 16,800 square feet (approx.), 5 bedrooms, 9 bathrooms
DESCRIPTION: Fabulous estate on over five lush acres. Magnificent entry. Luxurious master suite w/ exquisite his/her master bath, adjoining gym & spa. Features a media room, piano room & wood paneled, two-story office, elevator. Brand new, brick-lined wine cellar w/ its own dining and living areas. Glorious kitchen that leads out to a meticulously manicured rose garden, a gorgeous pool & step-down tennis court. Outdoor cabana w/ expansive living area, bar & bath. Private walking paths throughout the property.

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: While normally we focus on the homes of celebrity types, we're going to branch out just a bit this morning and talk about a huge house recently listed for sale in Beverly Park, the grandiose grand daddy of luxury gated communities in southern California. The mansion, owned by controversial and prolific property developer Robert Bisno and one of six Beverly Park palaces currently on the open market, has popped up with an asking price of $29,500,000.

Some of the children will recall that back in the Spring of 2008 Your Mama has discussed this mammoth mansion on several previous occasions because there was a bit of brouhaha about the opulent property coming thisclose to being foreclosed...a very rare thing along the rarefied and ridiculously rich streets of Beverly Hills.

Although it would seem that big biznessman Bisno managed to pull his large and lavish home from the angry and gaping maw of foreclosure, he's decided to sell the extremely expensive to maintain property which records and listing information reveals measures in at approximately 16,800 square feet and sits on a five-plus acre lot. Sixteen thousand square feet may be the size of damn boo-teek hotel, however, it is hardly one of the larger houses in Beverly Park where really rich real estate size queens go to gloat and strut their deep pockets in a peacockian display meant to impress, well, everybody.

Listing information indicates the Bisno residence has five bedrooms and nine bathrooms including a master bedroom bigger than most houses that features dual master bathrooms, gargantuan walk in closets, and an adjoining gym and spa. Even though we don't like the overall day-core in the master bedroom we are totally and completely in love with that gildeda nd gorgeously campy four poster bed. It's truly horrible, but we could work that shit out.

Other features, according to listing information, are a double height living room done up in all manner of beige and champagne colored furniture and a mostly brown dining room for 12 or more with an intricately carved ceiling that looks like it might have been imported from some old castle somewhere. The two-story paneled office/library includes floor to ceiling book cases filled with books that don't even look like they're real (they may be, they just don't look like it to our untrained eye). The gore-may kitchen features a breakfast room, all the refrigerators, ovens and warming drawers a private chef might require, and the largest and most dangerous copper pot laden pot rack Your Mama has ever had the misfortune of laying our beady little eyes on. Sitting in those hideous armchairs at that breakfast bar is taking your life into your own hands and we do not recommend eating toast or pancakes or anything else while sitting there unless you are wearing a damn football helmet and you have all your life insurance in order.

Other rooms include a grand entrance hall with a swooping staircase, a piano room, den, a lackluster family room with even more champagne colored divans, a beige media room with beige recliners and beige carpeting, and somewhere–rather surprisingly–is a room devoted entirely to a ping pong table. We've never seen this particular quirk before and we really and truly do not know how to process that information.

On the lower floor, the Bisno's have installed a brick lined wine cellar that includes a large game room, a small tasting room as well as its own living room and dining rooms. All the well to do winos of the world will love the basement rooms so that they can can always be comfortable and within safe staggering distance of their high priced wines and spirits. And too, they'll appreciate the elevator to whisk their boozy butts all the way up to the second floor bedrooms.

The extensively landscaped and meticulously maintained grounds include a very green and long lawn that probably costs as much to maintain every year as it does to buy a Mercedes, a long swimmers pool and spa with an adjacent pool house and bath, and a sunken tennis court for which Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter would kill to have in our own, much smaller backyard.

Listen children, other than the tennis court, the dee-voonly ridiculous bed in the master bedroom and the extensive wine cellar there's really little here that we can honestly swoon about. We certainly prefer to live with much more color around us (what is it with very rich people and their beige day-core?), we have far more contemporary taste in furniture and art than we see up in this mansion, and we'd sooner live in a cardboard box than be subjected to the obvious dangers of that leviathan pot rack. However, this is clearly how many of the super rich residents all over Los Angeles like to live as is evidenced by the many (MANY) other mansions we've discussed with very expensive but atrociously banal and beige day-core. Our decorative cries and pleas will surely go unheard and unheeded and that's just fine. Everyone has a right to live any way they want.

Other bonuses of living in Beverly Park are the guarded gates, the smug knowledge that everyone around you is impossibly rich, the private (and heavily armed) private security that patrol the wide and empty streets 24/7, and a private play park for the kids which we're told is NEVER used since everyone in Bev Park has the space and means to provide their youngins with private back yard play grounds. Plus, if you act quickly, you might be lucky enough to have that diminutive musician Prince–who currently leases one of the mega-mansions in Beverly Park–come ringing your bell and knocking on your elaborately carved door with the latest issue of Awake and a few words of whispered religious wisdom.

70 comments:

Anonymous said...

This home is a piece of junk. In this price range you can find a lot more value, style, class.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the post Mama.....this place is impressive mostly because it is the Shadowlands of all that is good and enviable in great residential architecture. It is as though the architect and designers heard and/ or read about what great homes should be. Nothing seems genuine to my eye. The architectural detailing inside and out seems so contrived; designed, not for a beautiful sense of place, but merely to impress. With that amount of wealth, one could and should have done much better.

Anonymous said...

I have been in this house on several occations. The house is beautiful.

Anonymous said...

Montana Jones luxuriated in the house that three divorces to increasingly wealthy men had built. The couches, the dining room, the ping pong room and the library were all stained that familiar shade of 'semen beige' so that the carnal desires that fixated Montana could be satiated at a moment's notice.

"I'm brilliant," she cooed to herself, "the money I've saved on cleaning the spunk off my ceilings alone has kept me in the black!"

She stared outside, wondering what it all meant? Not a damn thing she decided, not one damn thing.

Anonymous said...

I better visit the urologist. My semen is pearly white. It has never been beige. Maybe it's my diet. But I have never eaten beige spunk either.

SitDownKaren said...

Beautiful land! I wonder if he drives a Nissan?

SitDownKaren said...

LOL!!

Unknown said...

http://weahomes.com/slideshows/476/slideshow.html

Anonymous said...

It seems that the design team was either hampered by the client or out of their depth. The only word I can think of is uninspired.

Anonymous said...

Montana knew that some scoffed at her insistence of painting every wall, carpeting every floor and emphasizing each accessory with the 'semen beige' motif.

"Semen isn't beige," they squealed at the country club.

"They should know," thought Montana ruefully, examining each line in one of the many mirrors that filled her house, "after all, those bastards jerk off to my old magazine covers all day, to hell with them!"

Didn't they realize that semen stains, at least in her experience, dried to a soft matte beige? "Fools!" she screamed, reaching for one of the many impressive leather bound books that filled her unused library, I'll show them.

And yet, she knew she never would.

Anonymous said...

Viva....I have a drying semen experiment going and would love to send you the results if you could just leave your address..............

Anonymous said...

Montana chuckled at the suggestions that she was somehow interested in drying semen experiments, "the nerve of some people," she mused, plucking her eyebrows with precision.

Life was simple, Montana knew she had her philosophy just right: make decisions and never look back.

It had worked with George, then Randall and finally William. Yes, each divorce a success and yet she never pondered the past.

"I live for the present!" she exclaimed to no one in particular, her Ecuadorian maid Guadalupe rolling her eyes in disgust.

Staring back at the grand staircase in her semen stained home, that she knew would never sell for her asking price, Montana became wistful.

"It's a great life, it's my life and I deserve it!"

The End.

Anonymous said...

Oh no, it cannot....must not end. It is a seminal work from a great author. I demand the sequel...with musky passageways, focally stiff draperies stained in beige...all staged perfectly by Montana, the transvestite semenologist who simply can't get enough of the stuff.

Anonymous said...

Geez - thanks for the visuals. Now I'm looking at the few white / beige walls in my house trying to figure out which are the color of jiz.

If I was shopping for a house in this price range (it could happen - ya right!) I'd just keep on looking - this place just ain't doing anything to life my skirt.

Happy Thanksgiving Mama.

Christopher Hain said...

For just $6.5 million more, you could buy the brand new, far superior, larger and immensely beautiful house at 40 Beverly Park.

Anonymous said...

Viva!.... you totally had me captivated in the strangest way. I would have never thought of such things upon looking at this mansion in Beverly Park. I guess someone started dipping in the holiday punch early this year? ;)

Anon 7:38pm...
"Transvestite Semenologist"... WTF???

Take it easy this holiday, everyone! Stay off the roads if you can. Don't overeat or at least save some leftover for the next day. Stay safe. :)

Happy Thanksgiving, Mama!
Happy Thanksgiving fellow 'stalkers'!

Anonymous said...

Christopher Hain....."For just 6.5 million more".......as though that amount is a mere triffle. Either Hain is a trust fund brat or needs his/her meds adjusted.

Anonymous said...

Hain, learn to ad, its $5.5m more, not $6.5

Alessandra said...

I like the master bath because I am in favor of the tub/fireplace combination. Very relaxing.

Otherwise, I find the place to be, as Bentley said, a mausoleum. Barf, beige, barf. Also, the Beverly Park people are having a little north/south civil war in regards to who gets to use which gates. Not very nice!

Anonymous said...

I love how you assume if someone can afford $29.5mm they can afford $35mm.

Not at all true. These days, millionares spend huge sums of their income to keep up apperances, often ending up just like all other American's. Mortgaged to the max.

Most people looking at a $295,000 house cannot afford to go down the street and buy the $350,000.

Same princples are at play.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, North Beverly Park is sueing South Beverly Park for a bunch of maintence fees (of which South Beverly Park was never required to pay but residence of No. Beverly Park want them to pay) because they use the north gates off Mulholland Drive to access their properties.... not doing so takes you on a 7 mile ride to enter the Southside of the neighborhood.

Anonymous said...

Looks like they changed their minds yet again.

I remember reading an artcile back sometime ago where Mrs. Bizno stated they owned another parcel in the neighborhood and planned to construct a new home in the future.

However, they must have changed their minds bc their lot was across the street at 71 Beverly Park Ter, the lot (6.5 acres listed at $16.5mm) was on the market with the very same agent they just listed this home with for quite sometime with plans for a 30k sq ft mega manse.

Recently, the lot came off the market and now they are trying to unload the house instead.

Anonymous said...

on the slideshow...

lookslike they use the fireplaces in the master bedroom and bathroom alot and the black stain should be cleaned off for selling, its repulsive

Anonymous said...

Something about this neighborhood is sooo intriguing to me. I would love to take a stroll through it some day.

Anonymous said...

... and look at the gates and hedges? You may as well walk down sunset.

Anonymous said...

does anyone know who owns 40 Beverly Park Circle? Some sources indicate that it's a new construction, but the boneheads at Virtual Globetrotting seem to be under the impression that Denzel Washington lives there. Then again, if Denzel were selling his house, Mama would be all over it by now.

Any thoughts?

Anonymous said...

Denzel Washington lives at 41 Beverly Park.... NOT 40 Beverly Park. Although, I must admit, I love 40 Beverly Park the best. :)

Mama's Kiwi Kid said...

The only reason I'd like to visit this property irl, is to attend the ping-pong room for the sole purpose of hitting a few ping-pong balls off that pair of "decorative" golden vases. I imagine they'd make a very satisfying pingy thudding sound that would resonate rather beautifully around the beige monstrosity.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, Denzel is across the street at 41 Beverly Park, he also owns the lot that would be addressed 39 Beverly Park, where he has a guest house.

40 Beverly Park is owned by an LLC carrying the address of the property. Not sure who the developer is. The house seems like a pretty good price at $35mm. Was originally $45mm. I think it's a beautiful house just not too impressive of a lot, probabaly one of the cheapest and smallest in Beverly Park.

Anonymous said...

Grossly overpriced....

Oh, And according to assessment data this house is 11,894 sq ft. not 16,800 sq ft. I'm assuming the "newly finished wine cellar" adds some to the sqaure footage but I doubt 5,000 s/f.

40 Beverly Park is gorgeous. 27,000 sq ft and it has an in-door and out-door pool. That's what I expect for thsi kind of money.

Christopher Hain said...

Not assuming anything.

Just pointing out how 40 Beverly Park is way more than $5.5 million better than the Bisno Behemoth.

Anonymous said...

I love living in my cardboard box with my drying semen dripping off the sides

Anonymous said...

This site has become disgusting! I wouldn't have wasted a drop if joe had fed me.

Anonymous said...

Chris Hain,

Agreed that the house located at 40 Beverly Park and the house here of the Bizno's are more than $5.5mm difference in price. But we don't know how many millions different the land is worth, cuz I gaurantee you the Bizno's 5 plus acres are worth quite a bit more than the slightly under 2-acre play 40 Beverly Park sits on.

Unknown said...

I don't think it's that bad, although 40 beverly park is my favorite. But 27 beverly park by far has the worst decor here is a link with about 40 photos of the inside.
http://www.efg7.com/realtor/avrillekrom/27beverlypark/index.htm

Christopher Hain said...

10:51, the extra land is an excellent point. An extra 3 acres at the Bisno property is definitely worth millions (of course, much more if you could subdivide it). If I recall correctly, Bisno also owns about 6 acres across the street at 71 Beverly Park that I think is on the market for $13 mill. I guess the overriding point I was trying to make (perhaps ineffectively) was more that I believe 40 Bev Pk is such a great house, it should be worth perhaps more than the $35 million it's now at (especially when you consider other comparable things on the market, or recent sales), and when I see the Bisno house at $29.5 million it seems even more true that 40 Bev Pk is a great deal. If Bisno gets it, all the better to him. I hope he does!

Christopher Hain said...

Mama,

It's unfortunate how petty and vulgar many of your commenters are.

You might consider moderating comments or prohibiting anonymous ones. I know you're anonymous, but that doesn't mean you should allow other anonymous junk to damage your work.

StPaulSnowman said...

As many here have said before, just skip what you find offensive or uninteresting. This is not a filtered real estate site, which you are perhaps most used to. The kooks and naughtiness make the comments interesting..........and, after all, Mama does sport the wooden spoon!

lil' gay boy said...

Who knew beige could be so loud? It's a cacophony of vulgarity.

Chock full of geegaws and frippery that add up to a stunning display of bad taste; no doubt high end materials, but they just don't gel. Mies van der Rohe's axiom, "Less is more," is certainly borne out by this behemoth. For the amount of money that must have been spent, something truly beautiful could have been achieved, but… ah, well; not my call.

Alessandra, although I like the idea of a fireplace in the master bath, the execution of this one brings to mind the gaping maws of a crematoria.

Viva! ––– you kill me every time; inspired…

Bentley, always the succinct bon mot.

Amen, Snowman; amen.

From the entry court with its ghastly snake sculpture & outsized pediment to the rather corporate looking pergola by the tennis court, the entire property is one missed opportunity after another; shame, really.

Oh and, Mr. Haim, if you want to play with the big boys and dabble in high end real estate like your blog claims (investors?!? bitch, please), try showing some class and buy an ad before you presume to tell Mama how to run her site; she's done just fine without you so far.

Cough it up, scumbag.

StPaulSnowman said...

LGB......"corporate pergola".....priceless! I will be watching Mama's site for a corporate cupola. I am sure Mr. Landry has designed one somewhere.

Anonymous said...

I'm still trying to figure out the kitchen configuration. From the angle we see in the photo, it looks like all floorspace and no counterspace? I have a thing against huge showplace kitchens that aren't functional. Am I missing something in this photo?

Christopher Hain said...

10:47, I apparently get to say whatever I want in this comment space (as do you) so I will continue to encourage "Mama" to moderate comments.

I do think it's interesting that you use the word "class."

My personal definition of the word "class" (and I acknowledge it may be different than yours) does not include anonymous vulgarity and insults.

Anonymous said...

Hain. Take your cheap logo and skeedaddle.

Christopher Hain said...

I think I'll stay.

Anonymous said...

Congratulations........you passed the entrance interview!

lil' gay boy said...

Now, now, Mr. Hain (spelled it right this time), no need to get your panties in a twist; by all means stay. As Classy points out, you've passed the first in a series of grueling challenges…

You'll find Mama's chilruns are an unruly bunch who speak their minds, drool, scratch their backs with the cutlery, hurl insults and occasionally throw food ––– and all the while Mama sits back serenely smiling on us all. Even "Cousin Joe" gets to rant & rave about the sky falling now & then.

But we're fiercely protective of our Mama & do not take kindly to anyone tellin' her how to take care of business; that is most definitely a wooden spoon offense.

So comment away; but be prepared to not only be contradicted, insulted, or just plain laughed at ––– as long as you're ready to stand behind what you say, and don't even think about plugging a business, it's all good.

My personal definition of the word "class" (and I acknowledge it may be different than yours) does not include anonymous vulgarity and insults.

True in part; but I never post anonymously, as the chillruns will attest. And honey, where I come from some of those words are terms of endearment. Just sayin'.

As for 40 Beverly, while it may be an improvement over Bisno's hot mess, it's still a paean to beige, and has it's own problems to boot.

Faux, faux, faux.

Christopher Hain said...

lgb,

Fair enough.

While I would prefer a more civilized discourse than some of the commenters, I recognize it's not for me to decide, and I enjoy the missivies of Miss Mama. So again, fair enough.

As for 40 Bev, I have no connection to it, but I have seen it in person, and it is the real deal.

Just sayin'.

Anonymous said...

Hain,

Anon 8:22 discussed their other parcel back along time ago and it was on the market for more like $18-19mm and reduced to $16.5mm

Anonymous said...

Christopher Hain seems to be quite a fan fo 40 BP.

http://www.prlog.org/10123142-top-10-beverly-hills-homes-for-sale.html

Anonymous said...

Beverly Park is in LOS ANGELES, not Beverly Hills. It is in the area referred to as Beverly Hills Post Office, or BHPO.

Anonymous said...

And that matters because..............?

Anonymous said...

A guy named Jeff Bazler built lot 40. The house was way over budget. He will make a very small profit if he sells it for the current sales price.

so_chic_darling said...

Elsie De Wolfe America's first celebrity interior decorator famously loved beige and for all the right reasons. She had grown up with the stiff formality and clutter of the gilded age and American Victorian opulence, she was the one who pushed for the streamlined simplicity and soft colors of the European modernists in the 1920s like the Bauhaus movement. When she saw the Parthenon for the first time she said "It's my color, it's beige".
If she were alive today she would need a nerve pill to deal with the new beige.

StPaulSnowman said...

Beige is easy on the eyes but a little bit goes a long way and as was recently mentioned........ less is more. This decorating scheme borders on monotint. There can be magic in a bold splash of color....like the green baize servants' doors in the great English country houses.

lil' gay boy said...

So_Chic, right on the money with our fabulous Elsie (Lady Mendl, immortalized in the Cole Porter lyric, "When you hear that Lady Mendl, standing up/Now turns a handspring landing up-/On her toes/Anything goes!").

But my favorite designer anecdote is still the headlines, "Jackie Hires Nun to Decorate White House!" when she engaged Sister Parish.

As for "new beige" you are so right. Even if it's a good thing (which in the case of these two properties I would have to dispute), too much of a good thing is simply that; too much.

Snowman; " …green baize servants' doors… " ––– a man after my own heart.

As for 40 Beverly, (which I suspected was on our newest sibling's agenda), it may be somewhat "superior" to the Bisno mess, but it's still a hot mess all its own. When I look at this mid-construction aerial shot, I see way too much house for the lot, which presents a poorly planned approach sequence and street façade that is incoherent (like sneaking in the side door); even the carefully cropped photos on the sales site cannot conceal the fact that the neighbors are just toodamnclose.

For a property that's approaching $40mm, I don't even want to know there are neighbors, much less be able to casually spy one on the terlit…

Christopher Hain said...

No agenda, just a great house (40BP, that is, not Bisno).

I have seen it in person. A client was looking at it, but his accountant told him he'd lost too much money this year.

I just happen to think 40 BP stands out compared with the other stuff I've seen around here in that price range.

As for my list, it needs updating. I put one house -- 1446 Donhill Dr. -- on the list before I got inside. And as usual, you always regret judging (good or bad) from photos alone. The finishings are atrocious. They cut corners everywhere and it shows.

But I think you'd find 40 BP is very impressive in person.

lil' gay boy said...

Just not my cup of tea, even if I had an unlimited budget…

French Regency-style is very tricky; personally, I've found that if it isn't executed with a Beaux Arts sensibility as far as site plan, layout & program, it veers dangerously close to those stuccoed horrors that are usually reserved for medical office buildings in strip malls. This place gives the impression of trying too hard to be a Biltmore, which it simply cannot touch.

Mansard roofs, arched French doors & windows, and other "French" accoutrements should be used sparingly, IMHO. Their origins are sometimes traced to congested urban areas where such methods were used to enhance the limited footprint. The mere scale of this monstrosity belies that notion.

Yes, you have seen it in person, and yes, pictures do lie. But, I believe you may be misconstruing "impressive" with actual quality execution of gracious design. The approach, for example, is terrible; the placement of the chimneys slapped up against the façade with underscaled windows and that routunda with its (here it comes, Snowman) "corporate cupola" placed as an afterthought (look at the connecting hallway), with no concern for the initial presentation, is simply unforgivable in a home of this stature & price.

I don't need to visit it in person to see that things like the crown mouldings are out-of-scale, the rooms don't all relate to each other sympathetically, the scale is inconsistent, as is the level or ornamentation in the public spaces, underscaled wainscotting, etc.; the list goes on and on.

I'm hardly a purist and, other than in an authentic restoration find exact reproduction to be inappropriate, but once again, we're talking $39mm+ for this place; it may be chock full of the finest in materials, but shoehorned onto that lot, with that site plan, and that execution, is inexcusable.

It simply has no grace.

Anonymous said...

Welcome Mr. Hain. What is Josh Flagg really like? Spill your guts. All Mom's chillrun want to know and we won't rat you out.

StPaulSnowman said...

LGB. Enjoyed your critique. I hope Mama soon comes up with something more substantial for you to bite into. Regards

pedro said...

Someone really decided to put on their thinking cap, great going! It’s fantastic to see people really writing about the important things.

Anonymous said...

After reading all the comments, just went through the whole 40 BP slide show. Weird and out of scale. Any predictions for how long this one will be on the market and how many price chops to come?

Anonymous said...

Bob and his late playing partner at Stanford were highly rated ping-pong players back in the day of 'ping-pong' diplomacy with China.

One of the problems with Bob's place is that it shares a fenceline with the two mansions that make up the Saudi royal family's L.A. property. Those grounds are secured by guns-strapped-to-their-thighs guards who have no sense of humor at all.

Bob has had a number of business ventures go south, way way south recently and he may be packing up and heading back to Norcal where he also created more than a little controversary in Berkeley some years back.

Anonymous said...

This should serve as a cautionary tale for any greedy developer; don't try to "redevelop" Chase Knolls Garden Apartments.

What goes around, comes around.

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