NBCUniversal Vice Chairman Ron Meyer Seeks Record Amount for Malibu Estate
By Mark David
LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Shortly after it became public last year he and Kelly Chapman Meyer split up after more than 25 years of marriage, word slipped down the ultra high-end real estate gossip grapevine that showbiz potentate Ron Meyer was open to “ entertaining offers ” for a Malibu estate unofficially, albeit not quietly made available outside the Multiple Listing Service with a head-swimming $125 million price tag. Alas, with no offers, or at least none that were acceptable, Meyer has dumped the high-profile brokers who originally shopped the property and engaged the services of a third high-powered broker to officially list the manicured estate on the open market with a familiar but still eye-catching and publicity generating $125 million asking price.
Prominently perched on a high bluff above Malibu’s postcard perfect Paradise Cove, the just over three-acre spread, as noted by the Hollywood Reporter last year, was part of a decades long grudge match between Meyer and his former CAA partner Mike Ovitz who, shortly after Meyer announced his plan to leave CAA to run Universal Studios in 1995, purchased the plum property because he knew Meyer was keen to acquire it himself. Ovitz soon softened and sold the property to Meyer and stated in a talk at a 2016 event that he acted rashly and “ Shouldn’t have done what I did .”
Designed for the Meyers in the late 1990s by late, great maverick architect Charles Gwathmey and once quite aptly described in The Wall Street Journal as “a temple of order, structure and discipline,” the hulking residence makes a monolithic, modern statement at the end of a long, picturesquely tree-lined driveway. There are six bedrooms and 7.5 bathrooms in more than 13,600-square-feet, per listing details, plus a couple of guesthouses. The architect’s website offers a few tantalizing photos of the house sometime not long after it was completed.
A vast entrance gallery surely impresses both famous friends and domestic staff with a sculptural floating staircase that curves up to private family quarters next to a towering wall of glass and the capacious combination living and dining room features a remarkable, convex double-height ceiling and clerestory-style windows that fill the space with natural light along with a minimalist fireplace and an enormous wall of glass that cinematically frames a wide-ranging view of the ocean and coastline. The private, chef accommodating kitchen is open to a family room that spills out to an elevated terrace above the pool; there is, of course, a professional grade home theater; and the master suite incorporates a two-story paneled library and gallery.
A slender path bisects a football field-sized stretch of water guzzling lawn at the front of the house and passes what marketing materials describe as a “spa house” on its way to lighted tennis court sequestered behind an immense hedgerow while the back of the house opens to a swimming pool and spa surrounded by another wide expanse of lawn that runs up to the bluff’s edge where, at the top of a zigzagged private stairway down to the beach, there’s a stainless steel soaking tub for warming the bones after a swim, surf or frolic in the almost always frigid Pacific Ocean.
Should Meyer get smacked with the Real Estate Lucky Stick and entice a spendthrift buyer to lay out anywhere near its unquestionably robust asking price, it would easily top the standing record for the most expensive single family home ever sold in Los Angeles County, a Richard Meier-designed architectural tour de force on Malibu’s world-famous Carbon Beach that natural gas baron Michael S. Smith acquired in early 2018 for $110 million from Hard Rock Café co-founder Peter Morton.
Listing photos: Westside Estate Agency
