Detroit Pistons center and former Chicago Bull Brian Williams’ Santa Monica, Calif., home, which was listed for $1.595 million, has just gone under contract to a likely buyer, according to real estate sources.
Williams, 29, helped the Bulls to their fifth NBA championship last year before signing a seven-year, $45 million contract with Detroit. The 6-foot-11 Williams grew up in Santa Monica and played for the University of Arizona before making NBA stops in Orlando, Denver and Los Angeles.
Williams, who never owned property in the Chicago area during his several-month-long stay last year, has moved closer to his place of business in the Motor City by buying a house in suburban Bloomfield Hills.
According to sources close to listing agent William Kennedy of Coldwell Banker-Jon Douglas in Santa Monica, Williams accepted an offer from an unidentified buyer on July 30 and has a 45- to 60-day escrow process to complete the sale. The home originally was listed earlier this year for $1.68 million, and in recent weeks was called “priced to sell” by the realty firm.
Known as the “Guerra House,” Williams’ four-bedroom home, which is located in the Santa Monica canyon and was built in 1991, has marble floors, maple hardwood floors and cabinetry, as well as fiber-optic lighting, according to listing information. The house was designed by architect Melinda Grey and has barrel vaulted and gable roof forms that provide a “unique interplay of light shapes and levels” and an “exquisite use of woods” like the hardwood floors and cabinetry, according to listing information.
– Pepsi-Cola North America President and Chief Executive Officer Philip Marineau has sold his Sheridan Road mansion in Kenilworth for $2.25 million, according to public records. The former president of Quaker Oats and then Dean Foods, Marineau has moved to New York.
Marineau’s 5,700-square-foot French chateau in Kenilworth, which was profiled in this column on April 5 and which Marineau purchased in October 1991 for $2.09 million, had been listed for $2.85 million. The 14-room, six-bedroom home, which was built in 1928 and was designed by architect Peter Mayo, sits on about a half acre and faces Lake Michigan. The stately home has a library, rec room, multisport gym and a terrace leading to a private yard.
According to public records, the buyers of Marineau’s home were Pantelis and Margaret Georgiadis, formerly of Winnetka.
– One of the most expensive single-family homes in the Chicago area has finally gone under contract for $4.7 million, according to real estate sources.
First listed in April 1997, the massive, 25-room Italianate mansion at 1345 Lake Road in Lake Forest was on the market for $6.8 million, although it was under a “market-value range pricing system” that indicated the seller would entertain offers between $4.7 million and $6.8 million. The buyer, who has not yet been identified, forked over the lowest end of that range, according to a real estate source.
The seller is Ralph Falk II, the 76-year-old former chairman of Baxter International, whose grandfather founded the health-care giant in 1931. Falk lived in Northfield in the 1970s and also has lived in at least one other home in Lake Forest.
The 11,000-square-foot, seven-bedroom home was designed by architect Howard Van Doren Shaw in 1912 for Donald McClennan, president of Marsh & McClennan Inc. Falk underwent an exhaustive, nearly four-year renovation of the mansion in 1985 and, according to filings in a lawsuit involving his family, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to have sand shipped in to improve the property’s beach.
Built in the style of a Mediterranean villa, the home directs all important rooms toward the lake, giving viewers the impression that they are on the Mediterranean.
Jeannie Emmert of Coldwell Banker Prudential Burnet had the listing.
– In yet another Upper Bracket update, the owner of the late Chicago mob kingpin Anthony Accardo’s former mansion in River Forest has lowered its asking price to $2.59 million. On May 3, we reported that the 22,000-square-foot, nine-bedroom Tudor at 915 Franklin St. had just gone on the market for $2.775 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
