Illinois Lt. Gov. Bob Kustra has sold his 3-bedroom Cape Cod in north suburban Park Ridge, likely for close to its $429,000 asking price.
Kustra, 55, already has announced he will resign on July 1 to become the ninth president of the 16,000-student Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond, Ky. He has been the state’s second-ranking official since 1991, when he was elected as part of Gov. Jim Edgar’s ticket. In 1996, Kustra was considered a shoo-in for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate but was upset in the primary by former State Rep. Al Salvi.
Kustra’s 8-room Park Ridge home technically is owned by his wife, Kathleen Breidert Kustra, who moved there in 1978 with former husband Robert Breidert. Bob Kustra married Kathleen in 1989 and moved in then.
Built in 1923, it sits on a 177-foot-deep, professionally landscaped lot, according to listing information. An addition 10 years ago provided a master suite and vaulted family room, both opening to a multi-level deck. The home also has two fireplaces.
Joan Duerkop of Sebastian Co. Real Estate in Park Ridge was the listing agent for the home, which only was on the market for 12 days before going under contract.
– One of Lake Geneva’s most renowned estates, the 36-acre “Stenning” property on Snake Road, has gone on the market for $5.45 million.
Some locals call the “Stenning” the most elegant estate on the Wisconsin lake. Its classic, 14,000-square-foot Georgian mansion was built in 1906 for N.W. Harris, founder of Harris Bank. It is one of of several estates that has remained unchanged along a two-mile stretch of Lake Geneva shoreline that has managed to avoid development.
The property is being sold by heirs of Daniel Peterkin Jr., who died in 1988 at age 82. Peterkin joined Morton Salt Co. in 1928, became a director and vice president in 1937 and succeeded his father as president in 1941. He later oversaw the company’s growth from the nation’s top salt producer to a major pharmaceutical firm, serving as chairman and president of what now is called Morton International until his 1972 retirement.
In 1920, Peterkin family ancestor Walden Shaw bought Wadsworth Hall, which was named for Harris’ mother’s family, and renamed it the “Stenning” after his ancestral home in England. The property has about 630 feet of lake frontage, an original landscape plan designed by Frederick Olmstead, an Oriental garden, sweeping lawns, a large pond and massive trees. Under a conservation easement, only one additional parcel of at least five acres may be created from the property.
The white-pillared mansion was designed by Boston architectural firm Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge. That firm also designed the central Art Institute of Chicago structure, the Chicago Cultural Center and Ida Noyes Hall at the University of Chicago. The mansion’s most notable features include a 50-foot great hall, paneled library, billiard room, seven bedrooms, heated pool, caretaker’s residence, boathouse, servant’s quarters, eight fireplaces and 8-car garage. The interior rooms boast carved moldings and dentrils, hardwood floors and 20-foot ceilings.
Mary Myers and Lael Dimberg of Keefe Real Estate in Lake Geneva have the listing.
– Around the U.S.: In an Upper Bracket update, Sony Records President Tommy Mottola has unloaded his 51-acre estate in Bedford, N.Y., reportedly for $22 million to $25 million. The buyer? Financier and Snapple owner Nelson Peltz, who owns a 106-acre estate next door.
Mottola and then-wife Mariah Carey built the 9-bedroom mansion in 1994 for about $2 million but soon expanded it into a 20,000-square-foot home with two pools, a recording studio, seven fireplaces, 14 bathrooms and two pizza ovens. On March 22, we reported that the property was listed for $40 million.
It appears local agents are the big losers in this transaction. Peltz reportedly contacted Mottola personally, eliminating the need for a broker’s fee. And the additional land may serve to buffer Peltz, who likes to travel by chopper and who recently built a helicopter pad on his estate, from potentially irritated neighbors.
Mottola, meanwhile, paid $2.1 million last September for a house in the Hamptons on Long Island but already is irritating neighbors with development plans. Mottola has drawn criticism for chopping down a 150-year-old linden tree to make way for multiple wings and a tower for his carriage house. Additionally, Mottola last January proposed now-withdrawn plans to build a 195-foot pier, ramps, a boathouse and a 230-foot rock wall. Mottola now is settling for adding just a pool and a patio.
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Write to Upper Bracket, c/o Chicago Tribune, Real Estate section, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, Ill., 60611. E-mail: rgoldsbo@enteract.com
