The former Polaroid Beach House in Malibu, Calif., which rocker Travis Barker also once rented, has come on the market for $32,000,000 and is being marketed as a teardown.
This is yet another of the items that we had wanted to write about a few weeks back but were unable to do so owing to our site's hack attack. Credit to the Los Angeles Times' Ann Brenoff for breaking the story of the listing of the onetime party house, at 21942 Pacific Coast Highway on Carbon Beach (a.k.a., Billionaires' Beach) in Malibu. Haute Living magazine also subsequently wrote a blurb on the listing as well.
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So what can we tell you about the Polaroid Beach House that hasn't been written elsewhere? Let's start with the fact that the four-bedroom house was built in 1955, has five baths and measures 1,873 square feet, according to public records and listing information. In addition, the house sits on a 0.36-acre (15,673-square-foot), double-wide lot with 80 feet of beachfront, according to public records. And, as the Times noted, the current listing information -- which you can see -- includes plans to build a 6,000-square-foot house with a beachfront pool and spa.
Contrary to the Los Angeles Times' post, however, Polaroid Corporation never owned the house. The house was owned for years by financier and movie producer Peter Kleidman, who also owns the 1,092-square-foot house next door and who also has homes in Connecticut and London. Kleidman purchased what later became the Polaroid Beach House in 1998 from David Ashwell for $2,900,000, according to public records. Kleidman then agreed to lease the property in 2006 to Polaroid, which began holding celebrity-heavy parties at the house (pictured is Paris Hilton at a 2006 party at the house). Well after the 2006 summer party season had gotten underway, Kleidman sold the Polaroid Beach House on July 14, 2006 (deed recorded on August 1, 2006) to the current owners, Joseph and Thomasina Esformes, for an undisclosed price (based on our initial read of public records, it appears that the sale price was between $13 million and $14 million). Apparently, Kleidman immediately suffered a case of seller's remorse and tried to renege on the sale, but the Esformeses wouldn't let him out of his sales contract, according to a June 2007 article in the Malibu Surfside News. Apparently to retaliate, Kleidman famously irked his neighbors by opening up an access gate to allow public beach access, the Surfside News reported.
Regardless of that access imbroglio, we can tell you that the current owners, the Esformeses, ostensibly are related to the property's listing agent, whose name is Brett Esformes. We spoke with Brett on Thursday night, and he told us that the 'ownership group' decided not to renew Polaroid's lease of the house, which is why there were no parties at the house during summer 2008. However, we also should note that this past spring, Malibu officials stepped in and introduced new restrictions limiting homeowners to four major parties per property per summer. Officials also began requiring permits for all parties with more than 100 people, ABC News reported. This ultimately was the death knell not just for the Polaroid Beach House but also for the Silver Spoon Beach House and the LG Beach House, which were two other popular sites for celebrity-intensive, product placement-geared parties in 2006 and 2007.
With those kinds of restrictions, the Polaroid Beach House was converted to other uses, including being rented out to several celebrities including Travis Barker, Brett Esformes told us. No one currently is renting the house, Brett added.
Brett also told us that Dean Martin once owned this house. We're fairly certain that if that's not true, our friend E.J. over at The Movieland Directory will let us know.
(We should note that the Silver Spoon Beach House, which had been at 22420 Pacific Coast Highway, also had been owned by Kleidman, who then sold it in January 2008 to real estate developer/Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt and his wife Jamie for $18,975,000, according to public records. The purchase was an ideal a great way for the McCourts to eliminate a noise nuisance and also to create a buffer for their principal Malibu home, which is the John Lautner-designed beachfront house next door that they purchased from actress Courteney Cox in 2007 for $27,250,000, according to public records.)
One final point: certain places on the Internet erroneously state that the Polaroid Beach House's address was 20356 Pacific Coast Highway. Don't believe that. That 20356 address is the address for the infamous Moonshadows restaurant in Malibu. One of the more famous photographs ever taken at Moonshadows is this one, which appeared on our site sometime back as part of a post on Mel's real estate.