Although the transaction actually closed late last year, long before the coronavirus pandemic threw 2020’s everything into chaos, it’s only now that Hollywood mogul Jeremy Zimmer‘s acquisition of a spectacularly prime Pacific Palisades property has come to public attention. Set on nearly a full flat acre in the Riviera neighborhood — one of the most coveted neighborhood pockets on L.A.’s Westside — the estate is ringed by mature eucalyptus trees and offers dramatic ocean views.
At the time of Zimmer’s purchase, the double-lot compound also offered a mansard-roofed, traditional-style mansion originally built in the 1930s. Long owned by the same family, that house was first sold in 2016 for $9.8 million to professional baseball’s Kevin O’Malley, co-owner of the San Diego Padres and the son of former Dodgers owner Peter O’Malley.
O’Malley never moved into the home; instead, he embarked on a multi-year renovation and expansion of the existing structure before ultimately changing his mind and flipping the half-finished place to Zimmer for $11.1 million. (Earlier this year, Zimmer razed the under-construction house, leaving the lot vacant for a larger mansion of his own custom creation.)
Despite the area’s laid-back and family-friendly nature, O’Malley-cum-Zimmer Palisades estate lies in one of the priciest neighborhood pockets in Southern California, where some of the surrounding homes are owned by Sam Raimi, Molly Sims, Kate Hudson, Steven Spielberg, Jessica Capshaw, and Kevin Feige. And just up the road lies the former home of Reese Witherspoon, which the “Legally Blonde” star recently sold to AutoZone heiress Robin Formanek for more than $17 million.
Zimmer, 62, a former teenage William Morris mailroom employee, has been CEO of top talent agency UTA — a firm he co-founded — since 2012. Earlier this year, in response to the Covid-19 pandemic and the resulting layoffs that staggered all of Hollywood, he chose to forego his company salary for the remainder of 2020.
With longtime wife Marissa, whose father co-founded the Miller’s Outpost retail chain, Zimmer currently resides in a 10,000 sq. ft. traditional-style home in L.A.’s exclusive Brentwood Park neighborhood. That house, originally built in the 1920s and renovated by celebrated architect Steve Giannetti, was briefly offered for sale last spring at $20 million before being delisted.
David Offer of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices handled the transaction.