Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Nigerian Magnate Kola Aluko Nabs Another

A freshly finished Italianate mini-compound set behind motorized gates and high hedges on a prime street in the famously rarefied lower Bel Air area of Los Angeles popped up on the open market in June 2012 with a fat but hardly unheard of $29,000,000 price tag. The main villa and its detached guest/pool house—declared an "architectural triumph" in digital marketing materials—were conceived and executed by esteemed if somewhat under-the-radar architect Tim Morrison who—according to this—shares office space with and often works in tandem with also-esteemed West Hollywood-based architect Thomas Proctor.*

The steeply sloped, very vaguely boomerang-shaped and thus somewhat challenging street-to-street parcel encompasses just .7 acres and, depending on where online you look, the mini-compound's overall total square footage is 19,485 or 18,563 spread between a substantial main villa and a three-story detached guest/pool house. Either size it's a whole lotta luxurious interior space wedged onto a tight and lot that also features a couple of loggias, a wee patch of grass or two, and several sizable terraces hemmed by sturdy sturdy sturdy stone balustrades. A decidedly contemporary infinity edged swimming pool was engineered into the hillside over by the guest/pool house and and eight-plus car subterranean garage is decked out with a mosaic tiled car wash area, a deluxe feature we know Hector Q., mobile car washer to L.A.'s rich and famous, can appreciate.

Online listings Your Mama perused indicate there are a total of nine bedrooms and 14 bathrooms on the property. The main villa, a three story, elevator-equipped edifice that proudly opens to canyon and city views, contains three principal guest/family bedrooms on the upper floor plus an exceptionally spacious 2,200 square foot master suite. (F.Y.I. 2,200 square feet is just shy of the average size of an American home, children.) In addition to a separate sitting room and bedroom, the master suite has dual, custom-fitted dressing rooms and a pair of marble-slathered bathrooms, one leaning toward dapper (for him) the other bending more towards elegantly feminine (for her). Three more secondary guest/family bedrooms share the lower, semi-subterranean level with staff quarters, a gym, and a media room. There's an additional bedroom and bathroom in the detached guest/pool house in addition to a poolside living room with fireplace.

The impress-the-guests-style foyer in the main villa has limestone floors, double-height coved ceilings, and a heavy duty staircase that wraps around the room with some the chunkiest carved stone balustrades y'all have ever seen in your damn life. We don't care for the oval islands in the all-white and marble-countered kitchen because they just seem so forced and unnecessary and, although it's purdy to look at from certain angles, we feel uncomfortable with how the negative edge pool and the stone balustrades the flank it seem to want to scratch each other's eyes out. Also, unless it's the garage, Your Mama is baffled to the point of flabbergast by the vast, stone tile floored, and depressingly low-ceilinged lower level that looks like it could be a ballroom for hire at a Best Western in Minot, ND, but, other wise, in the hands of a talented and/or nice-gay or lady decorator, we think the house and grounds could be pretty spectacular if not exactly in line with our own personal taste. Anyhoodles, poodles...

Property records show the property in question was owned until the late 1990s by philanthropic real estate developer George C. Page who gifted the property to Pepperdine University, a prestigious (and pricey) private school in Malibu, that quickly sold it in July 1999 for $1,160,000 to a fella who quit-claimed it in 2002 to a corporate entity easily tied on the internets to the aforementioned architect Timothy Morrison. Mister Morrison borrowed a whole bunch of money and built the existing, Italian Riviera-ready mini-compound that was sold, according to property records and other online resources, in late October (2013) for $23.5 million. The buyer, according to property records, was an anonymous corporate concern that shields the identity of the owner so we can't say for sure but good ol' Yolanda Yakketyyak, a trusted and well-coifed real estate yenta who runs in high and even higher social circles, swore to Your Mama the buyer was Nigerian energy and aviation tycoon Kola Aluko.

Don't worry, children, if you'd not heard of Mister Aluko. He was, after all, just a year ago named to Forbes Magazine's list of Ten Nigerian Multi-Millionaires You've Never Heard Of. He has, however and to be sure, developed a slightly higher, playboy-ish profile since he's been poppin' up real regular in the property gossip columns for the last year or so and been palling around with Entertainment Industry big shots like Leo DiCaprio, Jay-Z and P. Diddy. So the stories go, the latter two hosted Mister Aluko's star-studded birthday party in Beverly Hills last year. Also raising his pampered, jet-setter profile in the international gossip columns is recent (alleged) association with the drop dead dee-vine if occasionally volatile supermodel and mega-rich man serial dater Naomi Campbell.**

Mister Aluko  may not (yet) be a hardcore real estate baller but, according to Your Mama's admittedly unscientific research and probably not comprehensive findings, the lavish living (and some say shady) Nigerian businessman hardly needs another high-maintenance mansion in Los Angeles. In July (2013) Mister Aluko shelled out $8.62 for a four bedroom duplex condo in a fine and full service if not exactly A-Grade pre-war building on Fifth Avenue in New York City and last year he allegedly spent just over $40 million to buy two top-of-the-line properties: one a gated, late 1990s French Country-style pile on a swank cul-de-sac just above Sunset Boulevard in Beverly Hills and the other a newly erected and aggressively contemporary situated just a few doors down from the Italianate mini-compound Yolanda swears he just bought. We can't vouch for it—making it just rumor and gossip, of course, but Yolanda also told Your Mama Mister Mister Aluko plans to use his new mini-compound as a guest house for his international business associates.

Clearly, children, Mister Aluko needs another twenty-some million dollar estate in Los Angeles like he needs another $50,000,000 boat like the one he bought a couple months ago and either loaned or leased in September to hip hop/pop power couple Jay-Z and Beyonce. But, if Your Mama has said it once we've said it 47,000 times before: Who, pray tell are we to make heads nor tales of the profligate real estate ways of the ever wealthier, increasingly itchy footed, and astronomically spendy super rich?

*Misters Morrison and Proctor are the folks who did up the Beverly Hills home now owned by Posh Spice and David Beckham as well as the guys who did the fairly recent re-do of a pedigreed—and gorgeous—Spanish Colonial estate in Beverly Hills that was formerly owned by actor James Colburn and later the Sultan of Brunei. The Bev Hills estate changed hands a few weeks ago when big business executive Kent Kresa, former chairman of both General Motors and Northrop Grumman, sold it for $27.5 million to—Your Mama heard word through the Platinum Triangle real estate gossip grapevine—a prominent Saudi Arabian multi-billionaire industrialist. Anyways...

**In addition to Mister Aluko, Miz Campbell has over the years been squired by an international crop of multi-millionaires, billionaires, and near billionaire who include: Italian Flavio Briatore; American Sean Puffy Diddy Daddy Combs; Brazilian Marco Elias; and, most recently, hunky Russian real estate baller Vladimir Doronin.

listing photos: Rodeo Realty

23 comments:

Anonymous said...

This newer Mediterranean home combines fine materials and finishes. Unfortunately, its poorly executed proportional relationships could not be disguised by the most talented of interior designers.

The coldly impersonal foyer would benefit from a beautiful rug; yet, the graceless balustrades would not be visually reduced in weight. The Palladian opening, with further balustrades and its odd side entrance to an upper room fails as well: The Rabbi forever ponders why few contemporary architects correctly conceive a classic Palladian window, which at its elegant best features a tall arched central section and narrower flanking sides. To top everything off, the foyer ceiling cove remains too shallow for the voluminous space. The living room ceiling is also too low, the rectilinear pool provides a jarring foil to the Mediterranean curves of the home, the unusually formed pool balustrade adds additional inappropriate counterpoint, and the blue exterior trim is incongruent.

More distressing to the Rabbi are the allegations of questionable business practices concerning Mr. Kola Aluko, allegations which have not been verified and exist only as malicious gossip and for the purpose of character assassination. The links indicating Mr. Aluko owns the most expensive automobile and yacht for a Black man are also troubling, as the Rabbi has never heard that Mr. Smith or Ms. Jones own the finest Chippendale armchairs or Camille Pissarro painting for a Caucasian person.

The Rabbi will now step off her bimah (pulpit).

Rabbi Hedda LaCasa

Anonymous said...

I thought the kitchen was the master bath for a hot second! And that those two islands were his and her vanity sinks or something

Anonymous said...

Shady foreign billionaires launder and park their illicitly gotten fortunes in high-end American (and European) real estate all the time, so that's probably the real answer as to "why" this probable criminal likely "needs" multiple LA-area estates; they're not homes, they're capital storage devices...

Anonymous said...

Wow! Such an elegant, well executed home. Looks like something you'd see in the So. Of France. A blank canvas for beautiful furnishings. I like it a lot.

Anonymous said...

Parts of this house are beautiful, but for me it does not work as a whole. One of the major problems with this house is the driveway, you only fit 1.5 cars in it. Hence the 8 car subterranean garage. But what happens when you have a dinner party? Good luck having your guests park on Sarbonne, that street is so narrow.

lil' gay boy said...

At first blush, when I saw the entrance courtyard, I was immediately reminded of Eagle's Nest, the "bachelor pad" built for William K. Vanderbilt II here in Centerport and thought, sweet! (albeit sans the waterfront view).

Then I saw the interior photos...

No need to beat the dead horse into Alpo, our Dear Rebbe has covered it all; suffice it to say that despite a clever site plan that offered intriguing possibilities, the execution, IMHO, is an epic fail.

Petra's said...

The estate looks magnificent in that aerial shot. Too bad it fails to measure up on closer inspection.

"Edit." - Tim Gunn

Rosco Mare said...

This place could be spec-house-tacular with the right decorating team; though, the pool seems wrong for the house. I've been faked out by the beautiful gate at the lower end of the property while driving past it, assuming that it is old because it resembles the Bel-Air East Gate.

Anonymous said...

I have one question, is this Kenya Moore from real housewives' "Nigerian prince" she keeps Blabbing about???

Anonymous said...

can you change the staircase balustrades on the foyer into something else also most of the balustrades on the outer grounds?if yes...its great:)

Anonymous said...

What proportioins are you thinking of, Rabbi Hedda?

Anonymous said...

I have hurt my eyes on worse, but this place is a hot mess. And Mr. Proctor needs to get over herself ...his web site has no info and you have to request to see his project portfolio. If AM Stern shows their projects, I think you can to honey. However they probably look like this and so they would rather send to you, or no one would contact them.

Anonymous said...

Following a gut shloft (wonderful sleep), the Rabbi is attempting to bless this house. Similar to LGB, upon first sight of the fine paneled entrance doors, with lead glass capped by a broken pediment she exclaimed aloud, "Oy ich zayn a beys!" (Ah, is this a house.) And per Petra, the Rabbi agrees the estate appears magnificent in the aerial photograph.

Alas, similar to Anon. 5:54 p.m., the Rabbi initially perceived the kitchen to be the master bath. And per Anon. 9:55 p.m., the Rabbi even imagined swapping out the corpulent balustrades.

In gentle response to Anon. 12:09 a.m., the Rabbi believes the grand scale of the foyer overwhelms the reduced proportions of the entertaining rooms, the portico columns suffer from anorexia, and the multiple straight-edged lawns and terraces would be far more graceful if curved.

In Yiddishkeit, the concept of sin is not as prevalent as one who temporarily misses the mark and later atones. And while not a full blown sin, this home misses the mark in so many ways. The Rabbi regrets she cannot concur with Mama, Anon. 6:29 p.m., and her good friend Rosco Mare, and on Yom Kippur will atone for her disagreeable ways.

Rabbi Hedda LaCasa

Anonymous said...

Too much house not enough land. I was wondering what person would buy this it's one who has too much money and little understand of LA real estate market. Many better deals in Bel Air and Beverly Hills for the price he paid.

Anonymous said...

I have driven past this house before. The front door is literally 10 ft from the street with no gate or anything. The house also looks much smaller from the street than it is.

Anonymous said...

mama, what is the phone # for Hector Q. mobile car washer you mentioned above?

Sandpiper said...

I like a lot of it, and feel for the predicament of these high-end architects when faced with melding their professionally-training plans with a client's idiosyncratic "edits." Must drive those poor architects bat shit crazy. (Of course I disqualify the mansion spewing "L" word from this talent pool as always.) Meow.

Rabbi,
More and more, my humble little original thoughts and statements are popping up all over your posts -- as if they are your own. I am subjectively touched.

So again Rabbi, to describe my heartfelt feelings, I offer to you this very astute quote by Coco Chanel, "... [it] is the highest form of flattery."


I also encourage you to enjoy the quote in it's entirety at your Googling leisure.

Anonymous said...

Dear Sandpiper,

I genuinely enjoy your comments, was unaware to have appropriated your thoughts and statements, and am truly sorry. I fear being further skewered and yet invite you to provide me with additional enlightenment.

Sincerely,
Hedda


Anonymous said...

If a certain someone doesn't leave our esteemed and original Queen Rabbi Hedda alone, I'm gonna be having BBQ shorebird for lunch...

Anonymous said...

Yep, money laundering, the high end real estate and art market are awash with it.

Rosco Mare said...

I wouldn't pick on our dear Rabbi-In-Residence Hedda, considering she has friends in a VERY HIGH place.

Superyachtfan said...

Kola Aluko also owns the 65 meter superyacht Galactica Star, which was chartered by Beyoncé earlier this year

Anonymous said...

Nigeria - such a great country! Known for its superb socio-political system and now for its love for Vegastalian architecture.