Rios-designed Trousdale Estates manse fetches $28M

13K-square-foot home was architect’s first spec project

514 Chalette Drive and Mark Rios (Williams & Williams Estates Group, RIOS)
514 Chalette Drive and Mark Rios (Williams & Williams Estates Group, RIOS)

Renowned architect Mark Rios’s first-ever spec project has sold for $28 million.

The sale of the property closed this week to a foreign buyer, according to a source. Specific details about the buyer’s identity remain unclear.

The Rios-designed mansion is located at 514 Chalette Drive on a hillside in Trousdale Estates, the exclusive Beverly Hills neighborhood that’s long ranked among L.A.’s most popular celebrity enclaves. Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra and Richard Nixon once owned homes in the area; Elton John currently owns two there.

514 Chalette Drive514 Chalette Drive (Williams & Williams Estates Group)

514 Chalette Drive (Williams & Williams Estates Group)

The Chalette Drive property, which had been listed for $32.5 million, was sold by an investment group led by Jonathan and Lisa Bloch. Jonathan Bloch is a real estate attorney, and Lisa Bloch is a publisher of the Beverly Hills Courier. Jonathan is the manager of an LLC that owned and developed the property in partnership with Rios.

Sign Up for the undefined Newsletter

The six-bedroom, 12,500-square-foot home was designed in a modern style and features amenities including a theater, elevator, fire pit lounge, chef’s kitchen and 15-foot waterfall. It also offers panoramic views. The house is built over two stories.

Rios’s firm is known for landscape projects, including the Hollywood Bowl and Grand Par, in Downtown L.A. The architect has also designed a Japanese-inspired Bel Air mansion that was recently listed by Trevor Noah, and the grounds of homes owned by Ellen DeGeneres and the superstar couple Adam Levine and Behati Prinsloo.

But Rios had never designed a spec home until taking on the Chalette Drive project several years ago.

His focus, he told the Wall Street Journal last year, was capitalizing on the property’s “killer view”; he also incorporated a series of skylights and gave the pool an unusual shape to create an art piece. The home’s main rooms also have motorized doors so they easily disappear, he added. “You can pocket all these glass walls away and the house feels like a huge porch,” he said.

Read more