Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino Buys and Sells

SELLERS: Michael Rapino and Jolene Blalock
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $2,975,000
SIZE: 4,710 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: In late 2003, right about the time Live Nation Entertainment CEO and President Michael Rapino married petite and pin thin model/actress/accomplished Crayon artist Jolene Blalock (Star Trek: Enterprise), property records show he coughed up $2,850,000 for a micro-estate in L.A.'s lower Nichols Canyon that he and the missus listed last month with an only slightly higher price tag of $2,975,000. The price must have been spot on because within three weeks the mock-Med villa—built in 1979 with four bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms—was put into escrow with an unknown buyer.

Live Nation Entertainment is a recent and somewhat controversial merger between Live Nation—a concert promoter—and ticket selling juggernaut Ticketmaster. Live Nation owns dozens of performance venues around the country and they produce, promote and sell oceans of often high-priced tickets to vast numbers of concerts and other events. According to online statistics—and you know how everything you read on the internets is true—Live Nation had nearly $5.5 billion in gross flow through revenue in 2011.

Some of the more eagle eyed and memory blessed children might recall that a few weeks ago Your Mama discussed some scuttlebutt then making its way around in the Platinum Triangle about former Live Nation Executive Chairman Irving Azoff shaking up his music mogul worthy real estate portfolio.

Anyhoo, active listing details show the walled and gated micro-estate encompasses: a sizable motor court with parking for five or more cars; a front-facing attached three car garage; several modestly scaled but lushly landscaped gardens and courtyards; a partly octagonal two-story residence that opens to an indoor/outdoor living/dining area with a built-in barbecue station; a heated salt water swimming pool ringed by hedges and one of those abominable child-safety fences; and, finally, a lighted tennis court overlooked by a tented and curtained pavilion stuffed full of body torturing gymnasium equipment. All that, children, is crowded like a Tokyo subway car during rush hour onto a compact .58 acre lot.

the interior spaces are—natch—wired for sound and security and include a proper entrance hall, a sunny great room with fireplace, a separate formal dining room with oddly angled walls and wood floors and a brooding, oak paneled den with vaulted ceiling and built-in wet bar. The center island eat in kitchen is certainly spacious and well-equipped with a built-in desk area and top-notch stainless steel appliances but there's something, well, a little too ordinary about it. Maybe it's the ho-hum blond Shaker style cabinetry, the buff colored tile floors and/or maybe its the too ubiquitous MacMansion-style beige and brown flecked granite counter tops? The second floor master suite, according to the listing descriptive, skews celebrity-style with a sitting area, fireplace, dual walk-in custom closets and an over-sized bathroom with spa tub and steam shower.

As it turns out, Mister and Missus Rapino—who currently have one toddler age child—have already acquired their next home, a two parcel compound in a particularly posh pocket of Brentwood in Los Angeles with a  a much larger, far more expensive and more family-friendly mansion and a separate guesthouse. Property records show they paid $14,750,000 for both parcels.

The main house, a gated and new-fangled East Coast-ish sort of traditional with black shutters, measures in at 11,213 square feet with five bedrooms and six full and three half bathrooms including a spacious master suite with private office, walk-in closet and dual bathrooms.

Although the property spans just .66 acres, there's adequate room for a parking lot-sized tree-shaded circular motor court at the front and out back a deep terrace that extends the full-width of the house as well as a fair swathe of flat lawn—where Your Mama would bet Mister Rapino soon installs a very expensive jungle gym—and a decent-sized heated swimming pool.

In addition to all the usual features—formal living and dining rooms that both have fireplaces, a roomy family room, a chef-friendly kitchen, etc.—the three-story mansion has a fully finished basement that contains a guest (or staff) suite, a fitness room, an office, a bedroom-sized temperature controlled wine cellar, a projector equipped screening room and a suburban kitchen-sized laundry room outfitted with two washers and two dryers, a center island folding table with marble counter top, inlaid tile floors and enough high gloss white cabinetry to stock every brand of detergent, fabric softener and bleach known to mankind. As can and ought to be expected in a nearly $15 million mansion in Los Angeles, the property is secured with a state-of-the-art closed circuit television system.

Included in the Rapino purchase was an adjacent but legally separate parcel that happens to butt up against the extensive, sculpture sprinkled grounds—see the coiled Serra piece in the lower right corner?—that surround the whackadoodle architectural confection that Frank Gehry conjured up for home building tycoon and deep pocketed art world patron Eli Broad and his wife Edye. Gehry's extravaganza makes a thrilling and geometrically complicated if not easily comprehensible amalgamation of very contemporary residential and museum-style vernaculars but, then again, what does Your Mama really know about anything?

Anyhoo, the L.A. County Tax Man Office—and other information we easily teased out of the interweb—shows the mostly wooded .66 acre property sits well well off the street up and around the bend down a long, shared driveway and includes a 2,365 square foot ranch style house with three bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms in 2,365 square feet. Combined the two lots total 1.19 acres.

listing photos (Nichols Canyon): Coldwell Banker / Beverly Hills South
listing photos (Brentwood): Partners Trust
aerial photo (Eli Broad): Google