If you want to get some idea of how much longer Chicago White Sox third baseman Robin Ventura will stay with the team, you need only look west.
To west suburban Burr Ridge, that is, where Ventura, 31, has had his luxury town home in the Oak Creek Club development on the market for the last three months for $459,000.
And although Ventura denied in two separate interviews that his home is on the market–“The house is not for sale. It’s the house next door”–his listing agent, April Pozulp of Adams & Meyers, confirmed that the home is on the block and said she was considering holding an open house there this month.
Ventura currently is in the final year of a contract paying $6.1 million a year, and many observers don’t expect him to re-sign after the season is over. Plus, the White Sox have said they will be open to trade discussions on every player, including Ventura, before the league trading deadline at the end of this month.
To be sure, the fact that Ventura’s house–which he bought in 1993 for about $418,000, according to public records–is for sale might simply be a contract-negotiating ploy. His principal residence is just off California Highway 101 in Arroyo Grande, Calif., which is in central California near San Luis Obispo.
Ventura acknowledged that the home was on the market at the start of this baseball season, when he also was facing uncertainty about staying with the team.
“We didn’t know if we were going to stay (with the White Sox),” Ventura said.
According to multiple listing service information, the home indeed was listed last April. Since then, it never has been taken off the market nor reduced in price.
The 11-room, five-bedroom town home has “French country appeal throughout,” according to listing information, including a white custom kitchen, hardwood floors, designer tiles and a custom deck. It is located at the end of a cul-de-sac in the Oak Creek Club, a guarded-entrance community that is just south of 91st Street.
Ventura’s next-door neighbor to the west is broadcaster and former NBA coach Matt Guokas, who bought his town home there last July from former White Sox catcher Ron Karkovice for $425,000, according to public records. Karkovice also bought his town home in 1993, for $415,000.
– Remember former Channel 2 anchor Adele Arakawa?
Alive and well as a TV anchor in Denver, Arakawa and her husband, Berry Tiller, have placed their Burr Ridge home on the market for $487,000.
Arakawa, 40, left WBBM-TV in October 1993 for the ABC affiliate in Denver, where she has become one of the city’s most popular TV personalities. Since her departure, she and her husband, who is a contractor who builds luxury homes, have chosen to hang onto their home here. Having recently signed a five-year contract to stay in Denver, though, it is not likely she’ll return.
“I don’t have any intention of coming back,” Arakawa said. “We initially had the house on the market (in 1993) but then found out that a nearby company wanted to lease the home for one of its executives. He moved out in mid-May, and we put it up for sale. We were fortunate to lease it for as long as we did.”
Arakawa’s nine-room, four-bedroom home is in the Circle Ridge area of Burr Ridge, just down the street from former White Sox slugger Dan Pasqua. The nine-year-old brick Georgian, which she bought in January 1989 for $460,000, sits on a large cul-de-sac lot that adjoins a forest preserve. The home also includes a two-story entry, hardwood floors, a first-floor study, a vaulted family room and a finished basement with a rec room.
– Update: Former Lt. Gov. Bob Kustra, who recently packed up and moved south to become the president of Eastern Kentucky University, wound up selling his three-bedroom Cape Cod in Park Ridge to an unidentified buyer for $420,500, according to listing information. On May 24, Upper Bracket reported that Kustra, who will be provided with a house by the university, had listed the home for $429,000 and sold it in less than two weeks.
– Update 2: On May 3, Upper Bracket reported that a nine-room Highland Park colonial on Sheridan Road was on the market for $1.44 million. The price of the five-bedroom, 70-year-old stone house, which has a brick courtyard and is owned by a trading firm president, recently was reduced by more than 10 percent to $1.275 million. The home’s original list price was $1.895 million.
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Have a tip about a home sale or a piece of property being put on the market that involved 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
