Who says there’s no money in cable TV?
Not Fox Sports Chicago anchor Chet Coppock, that’s for sure.
The colorful, 28-year broadcasting veteran, who recently returned to Chicago after living in New York for three years, has bought a two-story, brick single-family home in West Lincoln Park for $699,000, according to public records.
Coppock, 48, hosts pregame programs for Bulls and Blackhawks games and the “Game Room,” a weeknight magazine show. Analysts on his program include Norm Van Lier, ex-Bear Doug Buffone and ex-Blackhawk Murray Bannerman.
After 13 years in various TV and radio broadcasting positions in Chicago, Coppock left his job at WMVP-AM in 1994 to head to New York. His live sports-interview format show extended to all of New York City when it was launched, but as channel access was curtailed, Coppock’s cable network went out of business, prompting his return to Chicago. The broadcaster, who never met a cliche he didn’t like, also has returned to WMVP, where he’s providing daily sports reports.
Coppock’s newly built, two-story walkup has colonial front windows that offer passersby a peek at his living room–and at the grand piano that’s inside. The detached home, which originally was listed for $719,000, isn’t far from his last Chicago home on West Altgeld Street, which he sold in 1994 for $660,000.
Coppock also recently sold his four-bedroom English colonial in Manhasset, N.Y., which had been on the market for $795,000, according to a local real estate agent. Notable residents of the affluent suburb on Long Island’s northern shore include disgraced former New York Chief Judge Sol Wachtler, and some of its best-known former residents are actor Ken Howard, who grew up there, William S. Paley, golfer Nancy Lopez and Hair Club for Men founder Sy Sperling, who sold his home there in 1995 for $500,000.
– Among the most expensive single-family homes on the market in the Chicago area is a spectacular, 25-room lakefront home on 3.4 acres in Lake Forest.
The massive Italianate mansion, owned by the scion of an old North Shore family, is for sale for $6.8 million. It first was listed last April.
The 11,000-square-foot, seven-bedroom home was designed by architect Howard Van Doren Shaw in 1912 in the style of a Mediterranean villa for Donald McClennan, president of Marsh & McClennan Inc. The present owners underwent an exhaustive, nearly four-year renovation in 1985 that at one point left only the exterior walls standing. Its design features include “exquisite marble, plaster ornamentation, elegant millwork and balustrades bordering terraces and balconies,” according to a brochure. It also has a nine-car garage.
“So many of the older homes on the lake have small windows, because their designers didn’t focus on the lake,” said listing agent Jeannie Emmert of Coldwell Banker, which recently purchased Prudential Burnet. “In this house, all of the important rooms focus on the lake, with spectactular views, so when you walk into this wonderful marble foyer and then look out onto the water, you feel like you’re on the Mediterranean.”
The property is believed to be the only Italianate mansion that Shaw designed in the area.
– Around the U.S.: Actor and comedian Jerry Seinfeld has paid, according to several reports, anywhere from $4.35 million to $5 million for a 3,500-square-foot duplex in the Beresford building in Manhattan, on Central Park West. The three-bedroom unit, which has been owned by violinist and conductor Isaac Stern, boasts a 29-by-18-foot living room, a 650-square-foot terrace, a small library, a gallery, a dining room and maid’s quarters. The apartment, which is entered via the 19th floor, also has a backyard garden.
The building’s tenants should make Seinfeld quite comfortable. Whereas the celebrity quotient of his present Central Park West building a few blocks to the north is not high, many of Seinfeld’s new neighbors are in the entertainment industry: Tony Randall, Helen Gurley Brown, Sidney Lumet, Beverly Sills and John McEnroe. Music industry mogul Tommy Mottola was set to purchase the unit but was rejected by the building’s co-op board; Seinfeld, however, should have no trouble winning approval in the Beresford.
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Have a tip about a home sale or a property being put on the market that involves a well-known Chicagoan or a well-known piece of Chicago real estate? Write to Upper Bracket, c/o Chicago Tribune, Real Estate section, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, Ill., 60611. E-mail: rgoldsbo@enteract.com
