Wednesday, October 10, 2012

The Real Estate Legacy of Fashion's Late Gianni Versace - Celebrity ...

Tuesday, October 9, 2012, by Rob Bear Photos: MA/D

It has been more than 15 years since fashion designer Gianni Versace was gunned down on the steps of his Miami mansion. The King of Fashion's empire passed to his family after his death, along with a whole host of impressive properties around the world. Since then, the Versace brand has continued (albiet hardly unchanged) under Donatella's creative control and Santo's business accumen, but many of Gianni's homes have been sold. Just two years before his death, Gianni Versace purchased a huge, 35-foot-wide townhouse just off of Fifth Avenue on Manhattan's ritzy Upper East Side for $7.5M and set about renovating it to his high standard. This townhouse, at 5 East 64th Street, was redone by MSM Architects, in conjunction with the Milan-based Laboratorio Associati. The resulting extravagant interiors were complemented by a first-class art collection that included several Picassos and Roy Lichtenstein's "Blue Nude." The contents of the house were later sold at auction?with that Lichtenstein fetching upwards of $5M?and the house itself sold in 2005 for $30M to hedge fund manager Thomas Sandell.

? The scene of Versace's murder, the massive Miami mansion-turned-hotel known as Casa Casuarina, recently found the spotlight again, as it was listed for a whopping $125M, tying for the most expensive listing in America. Versace purchased the building back in 1992 for $10M, when it was a decrepit apartment block, and renovated it into a personal palace worth of a Floridian Medici, adding a 6,100-square-foot wing and "a 54-foot-long mosaic-tiled pool lined with 24-karat gold." In 2000, it was purchased by tech entrepreneur Peter Loftin for $20M, and he converted the place into a boutique hotel. Loftin and his partners are the ones who have the hotel (or potential billionaire mansion) listed for $125M.

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