Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Michael Jordon Lists Multi-Wing Mega-Mansion

SELLER: Michael Jordon
LOCATION: Highland Park, IL
PRICE: $29,000,000
SIZE: 32,683 square feet, 9 bedrooms, 15 full and 4 half bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Simmer down tater tots. We know we're a bit late to this particular rodeo. That's because, for better and/or worse, Your Mama spent this morning frying up a very different celebrity real estate fish.

While Your Mama got busy shucking, jiving and making petty jabs about Little Kimmy Kardashian and her recent (and alleged) real estate activities, the celebrity real estate pooper scoopers over at The Wall Street Journal revealed that long-ago-retired but still much-beloved professional basketballer and sports world entrepreneur Michal Jordon pushed his multi-wing mega-mansion in the upscale Chicago suburb of Highland Park (IL) on the market with a super-sized and publicity-ensuring $29,000,000 asking price.

Even Your Mama, who does not know a tight end from a power forward in the athletic sense, knows well that Mister Michael Jordan is one of America's most adored, accomplished, and highly paid professional athletes and product endorsers with a half billion dollar-plus fortune and fat property portfolio to prove it.

Mister Jordan was expensively divorced from his first wife Juanita in 2007; It reportedly cost him close to $170,000,000 or, seen another way, ten million clams for every 17 years they were married. At about the time of their legal severance of marital ties the family's long-time Highland Park estate was transferred in to a trust. Unfortunately, Your Mama has no specific intel about whether Mister Jordan (along with his new fiancée Yvett Prieto) or ex-Missus Jordon occupied and maintained the premises over the last five years. Whatever the case, the suburban estate with its mall-sized mansion is now up for grabs.

The electronically-controlled front gates bear the number 23, which Your Mama thought might be the property's street address until we did a little due diligence and discovered '23' was the number that appeared on Mister Jordan's jersey throughout his illustrious career on the hardwoods. The gates swing open to a tree-lined black top drive that swoops across the thoroughly landscaped 7.29 acre estate and around to a massive, tree-shaded circular drive that has far more in common with the motor court out front of some random resort hotel than it does the driveway of average American home. The snaking drive continues beyond the circular drive, past two separate (but attached), climate-controlled, three car garages, curves around to a pair of small parking lots and winds up at a rear motor court where there appears to be another three-bay, climate-controlled garage.
 
Listing information shows Mister Jordan's mega-mansion measures in at a titanic 32,683 square feet with a total of 9 bedrooms and 15 full and 4 half bathrooms. It doesn't take a bejeweled abacus to figure out that's a total of 19 terlits, an amount that ensures the owner/resident of this beast of a house employ a full-time minimum wager tasked only to locate and lave all 19 bathrooms on a twice weekly basis. The Wall Street Journal pegged the manse at "more than 56,000 square feet of space," an figure we think—but can not confirm—probably includes the colossal compound's "indoor basketball complex" and "three bedroom guesthouse."

The Wall Street Journal also reported the mansion was constructed between 1993 and 1995 and images show it retains its original, well maintained and liberally curvaceous 1980s-minded exterior articulation. The interior was extensively renovated in 2009 with a decidedly sleek and very contemporary aspect that skews vaguely corporate due in part to the large scale of some of the rooms. Interior spaces, according to listing information, marketing materials and/or previous reports, include hotel ballroom-proportioned 1,056 square living room and an almost 800 square foot family room with floor-to-ceiling glass sliders on two opposite walls and a massive triangular sky light that runs like a spine down the center of the 37-foot long room.

A circular dining area's soaring ceiling is topped by an octagonal sky light and the adjacent, sculptural kitchen has a huge center island (with cook top) that appears to float in the center of the room, full-height pantry and storage cabinets, and—one imagines—the most expensive appliances money can buy. We realize this kitchen will not appeal to those who see kitchens as the emotional heart of the home but for all those folks who prefer their cooking centers be more Maserati than mini-van, this one will surely make them pee their pants with culinary equipment desire.

Listing information indicates Mister Jordan's mansion also contains a 500-plus square foot second level library, a 600-plus square foot den on the main level, an office and a study also on the main level, and at least one laundry room the size of what would pass for a good-sized bedroom in a modest suburban ranch house.

The various and vast patios and terraces that extend off the back of the house drop down to high-maintenance manicured grounds that encompass acres of flat lawns with an amoebic putting green, tucked away tennis court, suggestively-shaped deep-water pond, and a children's playground with two elaborate jungle gyms. Both The WSJ and listing information we peeped indicate Mister Jordan's estate includes a swimming pool although we're unable to locate it listing photos and/or aerial images of the property.

The property's pièce de résistance—and also perhaps it's bête noire due to the obvious fact that so few people in the Chicago area who can afford it will actually want to own or maintain it—would most certainly be the fully custom, state-of-the-art indoor basketball complex completed in 2001 and equipped with, as per The WSJ, "a full-size regulation basketball court with specially cushioned hardwood flooring, adjustable backstops and baskets and competition-quality, high-intensity lighting. The complex has a sound system tuned to provide perfect acoustics within the court space."

As best as we know from our research, in addition to the Highland Park beast Mister Jordan heaved on to the market this week His Airness currently maintains a penthouse pad in Charlotte, NC (where he's part owner of some professional basketball team or another that we know nothing about), a major mansion in the a gated, golf community in Jupiter, FL that is either newly completed ought to soon be completed, and a substantial ski house on almost 4 acres in posh Park City, UT.

aerial photo (top): Bing
listing photos: Baird & Warner

22 comments:

Anonymous said...

"does not know a tight end from a power forward in the athletic sense"

LOL! Love you mama!!

As for the "house", it looks more like an industrial office complex than anything resembling a home.

nursedeb said...

well, he DID play good basketball....
but this house is a hot mess.
I don't even like the kitchen.
and I love me some kitchens...
just cold and unwelcoming.

StPaulSnowman said...

The buyer pool must be about four individuals for this rambler in this location. I am seeling an anorexia group home or Church of Scientology in its future.

Anonymous said...

This price is so ludicrous it is not funny. Barring the fact that the house looks terrible, there is nothing else in the Chicago area that costs even half as much and those homes are in nicer areas with many on the lake.

I would not pay more than $7 million for this and that is being generous.

I wonder if him listing this house for such a ludicrous price coincides with the fact that Bulls player Derrick Rose just signed a $200 million shoe deal? Jordan must be trying to sucker him and separate him from some of that cash the way he suckers the unintelligent morons that buy his shoes.

Sorry MJ, unlike the troglodytes that buy your shoes, the person who can afford this type of home has a brain and does not care who you are.

For anything over $5 million I am going to be in Lake Forest or Barrington Hills.

Anonymous said...

This house is in a good town, but it is not on the lake. It backs up to train tracks and huge powerlines. As they say in the midwest "ain't gonna happen". Unless another baller comes along or a lottery winner.
In Chicago you are selling architects, not homes.
The only thing they did do correctly was higher the right real estate agent. If anyone can pull a rabbit out of hat it is her.

Anonymous said...

A wealthy individual could buy this, let the fire department burn it down for practice and take the deduction. I can't think of anything else its good for.

Anonymous said...

Is that swampy fake-lake-looking thing to the left the pool?

Jayne said...

An aggressive listing to be sure.

Anonymous said...

The house was built between 1993 and 1995, so he purposely went back in time to the 1980s and made it look dated? What the hell?

I would love to sit down with his agent and ask her how she came up with that listing price.

Anonymous said...

Why do sports figures so often build humongous thingies in hopeless places? This isn't the first instance of that, I think.

Anonymous said...

Im guessin if the (tacky) 23 is still on the front gate, MJ is the one that lived here after the divorce. You have to give the man snaps for love (or stupidity) having a "fiance" after that settlement??

Anonymous said...

I see a pool in the upper right hand corner of the aerial photo. Isn't that the guest house it's in front of or is that another property? If so, the neighbors are too close at this asking price.

Lady J

Anonymous said...

That is a neighbor's house Lady J.

I do not believe Mr. Jordan's house has a cement pond, further adding to its ludicrous asking price.

David Alexander Toluca Lake said...

The problem with these owner specific houses is there is a drastically smaller buyer pool for them.

The owner must love basketball or make drastic alterations to the property or demolish and start over.

Anonymous said...

How was this place priced? Well, here's an artist's reconstruction of a conversation overheard in Highland Park just before the listing went public:

"Michael, as your real estate agent, I see your house has 32,683 square feet. The most expensive houses in Highland Park and the better surrounding towns sell for a little under $1,000 a quare foot. So, let's price the house at a little under $1,000 times 32,683, or $32,683,000! That's reasonable, right? How about $29,000,000? It's less than the nice round number of $30 Million, which makes the place sound like a bargain! You know, like when shoes are tagged at $29.99?"

"O, and Michael, would you care for another big hit on this ganga cigar we've been toking? It's really great sh__! Up all day long! N-n-n-i-i-i-i-i-ce!"

Anonymous said...

The aerial shot makes it look like a dairy farm with a cow shortage. Was there a bovine plague in Highland Park? Is that why he's selling?

vanessa sanchez said...

I live in the area, Juanita and the kids lived in the house until they graduated school. They must all be done with highschool now so its time for Juanita to move out.His family is very nice and will adjusted for all the money they have.

lil' gay boy said...

For those who are just dying to know (I know you're just all siting on tenterhooks), the more current satellite view of this pile on Google shows that a pool now occupies the circular space where the grass is in the aerial photo Mama provided.

It's rather poky & round, with what appears to be a diving board at one side (tragic spine injury, anyone?)

Anonymous said...

From the air it looks uncomfortably like a sewage treatment plant.

Anonymous said...

A little note on all the pool speculation. Michael Jordan is afraid of water so they probably added the pool after they moved out.

Jordan grew up in Wilmington, NC which is a beach town.

When he was 11, Jordan and a friend went body surfing in the ocean. A big wave pulled them under water and out to deeper water. Jordan tried to save his friend but the friend drowned. He avoids water.

Alen said...

WOW what a nice house :)

Anonymous said...

1:43, if Jordan was so afraid of water and that was the reason for not having a pool, then why did he put a giant pond on the property which is inherently more dangerous than a pool could ever be.