Buying the property at 1446 Park St. North in St. Petersburg, Florida, won’t guarantee immortality, but it will buy a piece of cinematic history.
The estate — which has the iconic pool from the 1985 Academy Award-winning movie “Cocoon” as well as a 10,000-square-foot pink mansion, has listed for $11.5 million, the Tampa Bay Times reported.
The home, known as the “Casa de Muchas Flores” or “house of many flowers,” was built in 1924 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
It was designed by architect Henry H. Dupont, who also created the famous pink Don CeSar Hotel on St. Pete Beach.
Movie buffs will be most drawn to the detached pool house, which became famous as the rejuvenating fountain of youth in “Cocoon.” The film, directed by Ron Howard and starring Steve Guttenberg, Don Ameche and Wilford Brimley, centers on aliens who leave cocoons at the bottom of the ocean on Earth.
Other aliens return to retrieve the cocoons and use a special pool charged with a life force to regenerate them. Unbeknownst to the aliens, senior citizens from a nearby retirement community often sneak into the pool and find themselves revitalized with youthful energy.
The current owners of the property are Chester and Doris Babat, who purchased it in 1982 for $500,000. Notably, the pool house did not exist during the filming of “Cocoon.” Instead, a temporary structure was built over the outdoor pool for the movie. The Babats subsequently constructed the pool house based on the design from the film.
Dania Perry of Century 21 Jim White & Associates has the listing.
In addition to the famous pool house, several other locations in St. Petersburg were featured in “Cocoon,” including the former Woolworth’s at the old Northeast Shopping Center, Pinellas Lanes bowling center, the St. Petersburg Shuffleboard Club, and sidewalks outside the Snell Arcade.
It’s been a banner calendar year for iconic movie homes to hit the market.
A midcentury house on stilts in East Los Angeles that starred in “Heat” is listed for a cool $1.6 million.
The movie home of Danny Trejo’s Gilbert, the longtime getaway driver for the thief played by Robert De Niro in the 1995 action hit, is up for sale at 1219 Dodds Circle, Dirt.com reported.
In December, an undisclosed buyer agreed to buy the “Goonies” home at 368 38th Street in Astoria, Oregon, only weeks after it hit the market, the New York Post reported. The seller, Sandi Preston, was asking for $1.65 million, but the deal isn’t expected to close until the end of next month.
In November, the Cleveland house from “A Christmas Story,” another 1980s movie, hit the
— Ted Glanzer