The Vineyard Beverly Hills is a 157-acre property that is located near Beverly Crest and at the top Beverly Hills. The estate is used as a part-time event space and a full-time trophy property.
LA Curbed says that this trophy property is listed in the market for a billion dollar. It has also been noted that this 157-acre property is the last real estate trophy in Los Angeles. For over a decade this Billion Dollar Trophy Property has gone through multiple legal battles when the last owner, Herbalife founder Mark Hughes, died suddenly in 2000.
The Hollywood Reporter has a list of previous owners of The Vineyard Beverly Hills including some of its interesting stories of who might have been the next owner. According to the report, previous owners were all royalties either from foreign countries or A-list Hollywood celebrities.
In 1987, it was bought by Merv Griffin. She was hoping she could build a "58,000-square-foot house, a number chosen specifically so that it would be larger than the biggest house in LA at the time owned by Aaron Spelling." Spelling's The Manor has a rough area of 56,000 square-foot.
But the property had once again listed in the market and was bought by Shams Pahlavi, "oldest sister of he last Shah of Iran," in 1997. However, Shams wasn't able to build a lavish mansion since "the Iranian Revolution got going, and the Iranian students marched up to the princess' property and threw Molotov cocktails. Though Shams was not yet living at The Vineyard, she moved out of Beverly Hills shortly after that."
That same year, the property was sold to Herbalife founder/billionaire Mark Hughes for $8.5 million. According to the report, Hughes wanted "to build a 45,000-square-foot Mediterranean villa with tennis courts, a million-gallon pond and a wildlife sanctuary for himself, his third wife, and their young son, and had budgeted $100 million to make it happen." Yet, when he had divorced in 1999, he lost interest in building that humongous mansion. Unfortunately, he died in 2000. The only heir of his properties is his 8-year old son, but the boy could only use the inheritance when he's already 35. So now the Mark Hughes Family Trust is supervising the Hughes's estate, and "Conrad Klein-attorney, friend of Mark Hughes, and principal trustee of Hughes's estate-got to work on trying to sell or develop or do something with The Vineyard, which at this point was still just a really nice, dusty piece of property."
In light of this information (putting the Vineyard in the market), there are already several celebrities that have viewed the estate. Few of the names that have come out are Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise, but none of them have reached to the part of closing a deal. Brad Pitt was advised to make a couple of movies before he could afford the trophy property. Tom Cruise, on the other hand, wanted to purchase a parcel of the area and put some money down, yet the deal came to nothing.
