The Portabello Estate

For sale: modern Corona del Mar beauty, featuring state-of-the art electronics, a water treatment system, three pools, two spas, eight bedrooms and 10 bathrooms.

Oh, and a bowling alley, vintage movie theater, café, gymnasium, auto museum, wine cellar behind a bank-vault door and just under an acre of beachfront land.

Asking price?

$75 million.

That makes Portabello, as the mansion is known, one of the three most expensive residences currently for sale in America.

Donald Trump's Maison de L'Amitie in Palm Beach, Fla., is going for $125 million. Three Ponds Farm Estate in Bridgehampton, N.Y., has been on the market for more than a year at $75 million.

And so the 22,000-square-foot Brighton Road home, which went on the market last week, is tied for the second-highest asking price in the nation – and is the most expensive in California.

"It's not surprising because (Orange County) is a world-class destination," said Rick Goodwin, publisher of Ultimate Homes magazine, which documents the 1,000 most-expensive homes for sale. Orange County, like Palm Beach and the Hamptons, is "where people with money want to be."

County records list the owner as Frank W. Pritt III, founder of Seattle software maker Attachmate Corp. and an avid car collector.

Pritt purchased three adjacent beachfront lots in the Cameo Shores area for less than $12.5 million, consolidated them into a single tract in 1998 and launched a three-year effort to build his "soft contemporary" mansion.

"It's the most exciting (house) I've done," said Brion Jeannette, the Newport Beach architect who designed the house in close consultation with Pritt.

Jeannette said he was surprised by the asking price, but noted that the home, ideal for a large family and for informal entertaining, "was not inexpensive to build."

County property assessors estimated that the house alone is worth at least $16 million and the land is worth more than $13 million, for a total assessed value of $29.6 million, highest residential assessment in the county. But because of Proposition 13, tax assessments usually are well below a home's market value.

John McMonigle, the real estate agent signed to market the home, said the price tag is based on the estate's replacement cost: Around $45 million for the land and about $33 million for the home, at $1,500 per square foot.

The neighborhood is home to some of Orange County's wealthiest residents, including Broadcom Corp. co-founder Henry Samueli.

"I'm very confident we'll sell it, and I'm investing a significant amount of money in that belief," McMonigle said. "We're receiving quality interest already."

Interested buyers include local high-tech moguls and a European financier.

Jeannette said Pritt gave the home its name because its curving white roof resembles the portobello mushroom.

A pool on the upper deck includes a whirlpool spa in the center with a clear, plastic bubble on the bottom, so people below can see into it like an aquarium.

A 360-degree tunnel slide loops from the second level into the pool below.

"It's certainly a one-of-a-kind property," said Goodwin, the Ultimate Homes publisher.

Will the Portabello property fetch its asking price? If it does, it would be a record.

Goodwin said the highest price ever paid for a home in the United States was $70 million. The Associated Press reported a California record-topping $50 million. And county records show that at least $29 million was paid for a home in Laguna Beach.

"It's really like selling a piece of art," Goodwin said. "What makes it special, on top of all the bells and whistles, is its three oceanfront lots in one of the most expensive waterfront areas of the country."
By JEFF COLLINS The Orange County Register