Mount Olympus—a Hollywood Hills gated community once described as a “residential exercise in 1970s vulgarity” with its “faux palazzos” and “goofy marble urns”—should yield its title along with its kitschy street names (Hercules Drive, Electra Drive, Jupiter Drive …)
Los Angeles’ legit Mount Olympus (minus the froth)—the colossus of area real estate that’s become the supernal abode of Hollywood titans—is the gated community of Beverly Park, about three miles north of the Beverly Hills Hotel.
Never heard of it? Few mortals have.
You won’t find hapless renderings of Neoclassical architecture along Beverly Park’s sweeping avenues surging with gardeners, dog walkers, housekeepers, nannies and trainers pledged to serve Los Angeles’ wealthiest citizens. Instead, there’s a blend of grand architectural styles lording over multi-acre lots: French chateaus, Tuscan and Mediterranean villas, modernist manors, and Italianate estates, among others.
“Gated communities have had a resurgence in the last ten years—in terms of value and security,” says Hilton & Hyland President David Kramer. “Beverly Park was one of the last to experience this. There hadn’t been a lot of movement or major home upgrades. And now, Beverly Park is really hot.”
Amid faddish and sometimes flighty Los Angeles, Beverly Park presents a soothingly safe constructed reality, a paradisal planet unto itself. “It’s quiet and a kind of secret,” says landscape designer Andrea Scharff who has worked on two Beverly Park homes. She adds that there’s a four-acre children’s park in the center of the community, which has a Beverly Hills 90210 zip code although it’s sited in the City of Los Angeles.
“You can’t take photographs,” Scharff adds. “Beverly Park is modest in a way that’s so unexpected for Los Angeles.”
But in terms of size, perhaps only a pompous demigod would claim that a Jovian home of 25,000 square feet is modest (the Beverly Park average for recent whole-home remodels and new builds) or around 17,000 square feet for originals built after Beverly Park was launched in 1990. Larger homes on oversized lots are clustered in North Beverly Park, which has 64 homes; South Beverly Park has 16 homes. The minimum home size allowed in the development is 5,000 square feet.
But who’s to know what Adele, Justin Bieber, Denzel Washington, Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Rod Stewart, Saudi royals, tech billionaires, sports legends, and other notable residents, past and present, consider to be understated? Certainly not the home prices, which pair with Beverly Park’s status, by some accounts, as L.A.’s wealthiest neighborhood; its mean household income tops $500,000. Based on homes listed in the last 12 months, Beverly Park’s median list price is $47.5 million.
That figure, however, doesn’t tell the entire story, Kramer says. “Most every home in Beverly Park is over 25 years old. New owners usually spend no less than $10 million and many times much more to upgrade, remodel or repair properties.”
Beverly Park’s go-to architect has been Richard Landry, described by the New York Times as “The King of the Megamansion.” Along with homes designed for Mark Wahlberg, Eddie Murphy, and Tom Brady, Landry designed “Real Housewives” star Lisa Vanderpump’s 17,000-square foot chateau (since razed for a still larger Landry-designed home). Aerial shots of Vanderpump’s home appropriately doubled for the Rose family’s mansion in the pilot episode of CBS’ TV series, Schitt’s Creek.
Oversized new builds and renovated residences are favored by an influx of new buyers desiring impenetrable compounds (entry guard gates, roving armed guards, and individual estate gates). In fact, the fortified pocket’s security is so ironclad that Uber Eats drivers can have trouble delivering a simple Caesar salad.
Even with that marked downside (pizza door delivery is a mark of the truly privileged), the Olympian enclave is experiencing a bit of a renaissance.
“Although there are still a lot of foreign nationals, there’s definitely an element of younger Hollywood moving in,” says Kramer, who also cites increased numbers of renovations.
The short list of recent notable sales:
- In early 2022, singer Adele bought Sylvester Stallone’s 21,000 square-foot estate for $58 million, about half of what Stallone asked. She has since gutted the 1994 home to realize her own vision, demolishing numerous costly remodels and upgrades.
- 2023 sales include Mark Wahlberg’s Landry-designed 30,500-square-foot mansion, sold for $55 million; Justin Bieber’s purchase of an 11,000 square-foot home on 2.5 acres for $25.8 million; and Sofia Vergara’s purchase of a 17,100-square-foot Italianate home, formerly owned by Barry Bonds, for $26 million. In June 2023, singer Rod Stewart listed his Landry-designed 1990s home for $70 million.
- Further back in 2021, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson paid $27.8 million for an 18,000 square-foot residence he purchased from actor Paul Reiser.
In 2021, Kramer, who has agented four sales in Beverly Park, became part owner of a 4.67-acre North Beverly Park property, 73 and 74 Beverly Park Lane, when his effort to sell the conjoined addresses proved problematic.
“During the height of COVID, I showed the property 70 times,” says Kramer of the two homes. “New homes were selling, but this property was viewed as a teardown.” At the time, City oversight entities were shuttered making construction difficult.
But Kramer didn’t view the property’s main 14-bedroom Mediterranean mansion at 73 Beverly Park Lane as a teardown. Rather, given his remodeling expertise, he envisioned a contemporary estate that exploited the existing structure. He assembled a package for a potential buyer who agreed to it—as long as Kramer joined him with his own money.
In 2021, the pair purchased the two addresses for $28.5 million from Saudi Prince Turki bin Nasser. They razed the 8-bedroom home at 74 Beverly Park Lane and added a driveway to service the 73 address so that the properties could be sold separately. A 29,000 square-foot home is planned for 74 Beverly Park Lane.
Now complete, the reinterpreted nine-bedroom, 21-bathroom property at 73 Beverly Park Lane is a light-infused modernist home that looks nearly minimalist in design—save for its nearly 30,000 square-feet of living space. The home is sited on 2.6 acres.
The price: $90 million (officially $89.9 million using Realtors’ “charm pricing”). That extraordinary sum, if pocketed, would be a new Beverly Park record. The current record is $70 million for a 31,000 square foot estate sold in 2022 by billionaire Alec Gores, master of leveraged buyouts. Kramer points out that Gores also purchased an adjacent lot for $30 million, pushing his total investment to $100 million, and Adele’s investment will also top that number once she re-builds. In other words, the neighborhood has comps to match his lofty ask.
Kramer’s remodel is accessed through a new ficus-lined cobblestone drive that, after rounding a bend, presents what he terms a “massive reveal.”
An inset walkway is edged with pools of water and Brachychiton trees; the entry soars with 25 feet of glass. Entering, the straight on view, framed by a pair of curved staircases, is direct to the pool and vast lawn seen through more glass. Any trace of the former home’s Mediterranean design, which landscape designer Scharff termed “unwelcoming and depressing,” has been erased (Scharff mastered the reimagined home’s $1 million landscape plan).
Jesse J. Harrison of Harrison Design headed the structural renovation, with Mike Moser Studio and Todd DeMann Designs mastering the interior design scheme, all working closely with Kramer.
“It was technically a remodel, but it was essentially like building a new house, cost wise,” says Kramer who has co-listed the property with Hilton & Hyland’s Andrew Buss. “Drywall and stucco were removed. The walls weren’t saved and the floors weren’t saved. The whole house had to be shear walled.”
Standing seam metal roofs have replaced Spanish tiles, with some rooflines altered to accommodate walls of glass that grace the home with an urbane look.
It’s somewhat of a real estate trope to peddle Gilded Age-worthy homes (that could comfortably house dozens) as achieving the design trick of also being “cozy” and “intimate,” but Kramer and his team have done it through the use of specialized rooms and spaces.
Case in point: The kitchen, which now opens to a lounge area that envelops an ancient olive tree. The feel is of an old-world cafe setting that wouldn’t be out of place in an upscale family-run hotel in Portofino. Mature olive trees are placed throughout the grounds, lending the property gravitas.
Various other rooms have been reapportioned, and two rooms were added: a sunroom between the living and dining rooms along with an entry into the nearly 5,000 square-foot primary suite. The primary harbors two walk-in closets, one with various rooms that all told, is the size of a decent Brentwood apartment.
Boundaries between the outside and inside have vanished via new wall windows in various rooms, including the 18-person formal dining room where 15-foot tall glass walls open on three sides. “If you’re at the end of the table, you feel you’re really outside, except for the roof,” says Kramer. He adds that the new Techno gym affords the same feel. Views from most rooms and terraces are of the city skyline and beyond, the ocean.
The home’s backyard was increased by 35% to accommodate an 85-foot zero-edge pool and spa, undergirded by a new structural deck costing several million dollars.
Other upgrades include a commercial prep kitchen, professional-grade theater, massage room, steam sauna, salon, and a wine cellar. New oak floors done in a chevron pattern were laid throughout the estate.