Eyeing a move to Southern California for professional and personal reasons, former local TV anchor Diann Burns and her talent agent husband, Marc Watts, have placed their 13-room Lincoln Park mansion on the market for $4.825 million.
Burns, 54, was an anchor at top-rated WLS-Ch. 7 for close to two decades before jumping to WBBM-Ch. 2 in 2003. She left ” CBS-2″ in 2008 when her contract was not renewed.
Since last spring, she has been hosting the Chicago Urban League’s “nextTV” program, which airs Sunday mornings on Fox-owned WFLD-Ch. 32.
Watts said he increasingly has been moving into media training and coaching, and that the career opportunities for the couple are much greater in the Los Angeles area.
“Diann and I love the house and we love the neighborhood, which has great views and spectacular neighbors,” Watts said. “But with my line of work, I increasingly find myself out on the West Coast, and I’m doing too much work in Southern California to be flying back and forth every week.”
In addition, Watts noted that the couple’s 13-year-old son is a “young baseball phenom” who has been “champing at the bit” to move to a climate where he can play baseball 12 months a year. And he said Burns is “ideally suited” to pursue business opportunities as well in a media capital like Los Angeles.
“It’s in our best interests to move out there,” he said. “It just makes too much sense.”
Built in 2003 at a reported cost of $2 million, Burns and Watts’ six-bedroom home became news itself in 2006, when the couple sued their builder in Cook County Circuit Court alleging that the firm had performed substandard work. The couple settled the case in February 2009 through mediation, according to court records.
Features in the home include 5 1/2 baths, three fireplaces, a limestone facade, a front-loading garage, a penthouse with a great room, a lower level with a mud room and a rec room, and a roof deck with skyline views. The house has 5,752 square feet of above ground space and a total of more than 7,000 square feet of living space including its basement, said listing agent Jennifer Ames of Coldwell Banker. The home sits on a 33-foot-wide lot that has a large backyard with a terrace, garden and sport court.
“This house is a unique opportunity because it’s a wide house, and in this real estate market where everything has slowed down, wide houses are still highly in demand,” Ames said. “And with the garage in front, the house has a much bigger, more functional backyard than most in the city. I think this is a sophisticated house but it also really works for casual living. It’s not overly formal; it’s a very comfortable house.”
Watts said the couple plans to maintain a residence in Chicago.
“It doesn’t mean goodbye to Chicago for good. It just means we’re stepping away,” he said.
Update: Attorney Jeffrey Jacobs, who for 18 years was Oprah Winfrey’s agent, manager and adviser, has cut the asking price of his historic east Lincoln Park penthouse co-op to $4.95 million from $5.75 million. On March 21, Elite Street broke the news of Jacobs listing the four-bedroom, 5,600-square-foot co-op, which noted architect David Adler designed. Jacobs, who is moving out of state, and his wife significantly renovated the co-op after buying it in 1999.
