Todd Glaser buys Palm Beach estate for $17M

Developer Todd Michael Glaser paid $17 million for a landmarked Palm Beach estate, with plans to restore it and live there with his family, The Real Deal has learned.

Glaser and his wife, Kim, bought “Villa Fontana” at 127 Dunbar Road. The nearly 1-acre property includes an 8,384-square-foot main house and a 644-square-foot cabana, both built in 1925, according to property records. William H. Eberhardt is the seller.

Glaser said he financed the purchase with a $15 million, three-year loan at 5 percent from the seller, who had moved to Fort Lauderdale.

The four-bedroom, seven-bath home features murals by the late John Eberhardt, the mansion’s previous owner, who was a scenic artist and set designer and held parties and charity events at the estate. A self-taught architect, he built more than 50 houses including his home on Fire Island, New York, now called the Belvedere Hotel. Eberhardt died in 2014 at age 92, according to his obituary in the New York Times.

The Palm Beach estate includes fountains, ponds, terraces and open-air loggias.

“I’m going to restore it back to its old glory,” Glaser said.

The property was a pocket listing, with Lawrence Moens, owner of the brokerage Lawrence A. Moens Associates, representing both sides of the deal, Glaser said.

Glaser, an active spec home developer in Miami Beach, turned his sights to Palm Beach in 2017. In February, he and partners Philip Levine, Scott Robins and Jonathan Fryd sold a spec home at 113 Atlantic Avenue for $9.41 million to a scion of the family that founded Cumberland Farms.

Next door, at 111 Atlantic Avenue, another spec home that the partners developed is under contract and is expected to close in July, Glaser said.

The partners also developed two spec villas with a courtyard at 237 Brazilian Avenue in Palm Beach, which recently hit the market for $7.9 million each.