Vincent Gallo Sells Three L.A. Lofts, Buys One Tucson Architectural (EXCLUSIVE)

Vincent Gallo, who hasn’t appeared in a film for several years and for better and worse is still best known for his sexually explicit 2003 film “Brown Bunny,” has sold a trio of loft-style condos in downtown Los Angeles, Calif., and scooped up a striking architectural in the affluent foothills north of Tucson, Arizona.

By Mark David

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) –

Several months ago Gallo turned a nice profit on the sale of a not quite 2,000-square-foot, fourth-floor unit at the Toy Factory Lofts building in the trendy and gentrifying but still dicey Arts District that he bought in 2011 for $450,000 and sold to a mysterious trust for $1.599 million. A few months later he made an even more lucrative, off-market sale of two adjoining units on the seventh floor, one much larger than the other, that together span more than 2,700-square feet. He acquired the units in two separate transactions, the first in 2011 the second in 2013, that totaled $820,000 and sold them for $2.8 million to Harper Simon, musician son of Paul Simon.

Never one to shy away from a polemical idea, controversial bon mot or bold architectural statement, Gallo splashed out $3.25 million for a hulking steel, concrete and glass residence designed by acclaimed architect Rick Joy that is tucked high up in the golf-course sprinkled foothills of the otherwise craggy, cacti-strewn Catalina Mountains in the exclusive Ventana Canyon golf and resort community. There are five en suite bedrooms and 5.5 bathrooms in 6,480-square-feet.

An austere, canyon-like breezeway and broad flight of open-tread steps connects the garage and motor court — a sheltered space under a daringly cantilevered overhang — to the upper level where the combination living and dining room features polished concrete floors, black walnut built-ins and a room-wide ribbon of windows that cinematically frame a long southern vista over Tucson. The upper level additionally contains a huge den/family room with fireplace and a sleekly outfitted, double-island kitchen that opens to a pair slim terraces through massive banks of floor-to-ceiling glass panels that disappear completely into the walls when pushed open.

 

A generously proportioned guest suite is privately positioned behind the den on the upper level while family quarters — three en suite family bedrooms plus a master suite — open off a long, spare corridor on the lower level. A solid wall of frameless glass on the north side of the living room looks over the canyon-like entrance breezeway to a wind-protected terrace where a minimalist concrete plank hovers just above the dark bottom swimming pool and provides a link to a dining terrace with outdoor kitchen and grilling station. The house is outfitted with a commercial grade elevator, a camera-equipped security system and a hot water circulation system.

Avid celebrity property watchers may recall that Gallo, a Trump supporting radical political conservative who sells sexual encounters and sperm for in vitro fertilization on his website, isn’t the only architecture and design minded Tinseltowner who thinks Tucson is an attractive real estate bet; Earlier this year Diane Keaton paid $1.5 million for an 120-year-old adobe compound in the historic Barrio Viejo neighborhood just south of downtown that she plans to renovate, restore and, as is the avid serial house flipper’s wont, sell at a nice profit.

Gallo, who bought a characteristically quirky ten-acre compound in the mountains between Malibu and Thousand Oaks, Calif., in 2014 for $1.333 million, has long had a savvy and well-known penchant for interesting and high-minded architectural statements. In addition to a couple of condos at the famously celebrity-stacked Sierra Towers complex in West Hollywood, Calif., one of which he sold in 2006 for $3 million to Cher, he previously owned the gutsy and spectacularly peculiar John Lautner -designed Wolff House cleaved to a vertiginous hillside just above the L.A.’s Sunset Strip.

Listing photos: Long Realty Company