Property records Your Mama peeped reveal the comedienne and actress (Web Therapy, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Drop Dead Diva) bought the acre-plus property in March 1999 for $6,750,000. Your Mama (dissed and) discussed the deluxe domicile when Miz O'Donnell first put the posh pad on the (open) market in March 2012 with a $19,500,000 price tag. In March 2013 the price was cut to $17,500,000.
Listing details show the two-story mansion was originally built in 1923 and current listing information shows there are a total of 12 bedrooms and 11.5 bathrooms between the 11,104 square foot main house and two separate and private guest houses.
Listing photographs show a full grown adult-sized, taxidermy hammerhead shark hung ominously on the wall above the staircase in the double height foyer. There are also formal living and dining rooms, a den/library/office, media room, and a well-equipped, two-island kitchen that's open to a family room and informal dining area with a huge built-in fish tank. The second floor bedrooms include what listing details describe as a "vast master suite" with sitting room, fireplace, private office, and direct access to a large terrace that overlooks the water.
At the front there's a massive red brick motor court shaded by a massive mangrove tree at its center. At least we think it's a mangrove. Anyways, at the back of the house there's extensive tropical landscaping, a swimming pool, and 203 feet of water frontage with private boat dock.
Other high profile residents/home owners on Star Island include seven-time Grammy winning singer Gloria Estafan, Puff Diddle—or Diddle Fiddle or whatever Sean Combs calls himself nowadays, and hunky Russian billionaire Vladislav Doronin who bought his nearly 20,000 square foot Star Island mansion from retired professional basketballer Shaquille O'Neal for $16 million in 2009. Mister Doronin—so the scuttlebutt goes—recently traded famously volatile 43-year old supermodel Naomi Campbell in for a much younger, 25-year old up-and-coming model who—as it turns out—was mentored by Miz Campbell on the first season of the model search reality show The Face. Oh what a tangled romantic web he weaves. But that's really another story for another time and place.
In May 2011, Real Housewives of Miami's Lea Black, married to illustrious Miami-based criminal defense attorney Roy Black, paid $7,107,500—in cash—for a 9 bedroom and 9 bathroom Star Island fixer upper. Last fall (2012), in confusing bankruptcy and foreclosure situation, prominent plastic surgeon Lenny Hochstein and his lavishly plastified wife, Lisa—also a Real Housewives of Miami cast member—acquired a storied Star Island house that's immediately next door to Miz O'Donnell's. The Hochsteins say the mansion has a multitude of crippling issues includes a faulty foundation and would like to tear down and replace the existing house but they face a whole lot of opposition by preservation minded folks who would prefer they restore the existing house rather than tear it down. If we were the betting type—and we're not—we'd put all our dinero on the Hochsteins being granted permission to knock the beotch down. But that too is really another story for another time and place.
Miz O'Donnell's property portfolio includes a 1,391 square foot condo in Midtown Manhattan's Hells Kitchen area that she bought in October 2008 for $2,005,000 and a multi-acre Hudson River-front compound in Nyack, NY that has at least five separate residences and cost her a total of $8,605,000, according to property records and other online resources.
*For the record, as of this morning most online listings show Miz O'Donnell's Miami Beach spread is still available at $17.5 million and Your Mama did not find any record of a recent transfer of ownership so that means this is all, technically, just a bit o' celebrity real estate rumor and gossip.
listing photos: One Sotheby's International Realty
