The home of Avi and Joyce Arad in North Beverly Park

WHEN Irena Medavoy decided to build her dream home, on two flat acres above Beverly Hills, one thing was really important. "I wanted it warm, cozy, informal," she said, before demonstrating how the living room converts into a screening room. At the push of a button, a 20-foot-wide screen descended from the ceiling and three huge speakers rose from beneath the wood parquet floor. At the other end of the room, a floor-to-ceiling bookcase sank — Batcave-like — revealing a projection room hidden behind it.

By the standards of North Beverly Park, the gated community where Mrs. Medavoy and her husband, the Hollywood producer Mike Medavoy, live, their home — 11,000 square feet in an East Coast traditional style — actually is cozy.

That's because other houses in this intensely private, security-obsessed community for Hollywood potentates, business tycoons and movie and sports stars are even larger, more on the order of small hotels: 20,000, 30,000 or, in a couple of cases, more than 40,000 square feet. When Eunice Kennedy Shriver visited the Medavoys during a reception for President Vicente Fox of Mexico, she said of their spread, "I didn't even know they built houses like this anymore," her hostess recalled.

In an age of gilded real estate excess, massive homes are nothing new. Still, the scale of Beverly Park is striking, with one palacelike home next to another like a billionaires' Levittown. East Coast visitors often react with wonder-cum-horror at the neighborhood, while even in Hollywood's monied upper echelons, some consider Beverly Park to be too much.

"You won't find anywhere a concentration of such large homes," said Joyce Rey, who heads the estates division for Coldwell Banker on the West Side of Los Angeles. "You'll find a large estate in Bel Air, or a few large estates. But you won't find a concentration of houses, and new houses, with such large square footage."

How did it happen? "We've had a concentration of the rich getting richer, and that's really propelled the construction of these homes," she said.

But there's also the question of keeping up with the neighbors, when the neighbors are a Who's Who of show business elite. Eddie Murphy lives in a 45,000-square-foot Italianate compound (alone, apparently, since his divorce in April). Nearby are the homes of Barry Bonds, Reba McEntire, Rod Stewart, Sylvester Stallone, Denzel Washington, the Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone, the billionaire Haim Saban and Avi Arad, the recently retired Marvel chairman who is now a producer.

What binds this group together is not so much work or leisure pursuits, but a baseline of stratospheric wealth or fame and a keen desire for privacy. In a city where paparazzi roam like packs of wild dogs, you will never see one in, or even near, Beverly Park, whose main entrance is hidden down a long road to a secure gatehouse off San Ysidro Drive. A second entrance is off Mulholland Drive, that winding road that traces the ridge above the wealthy West Side.

In many ways, the neighborhood is a testament to the power of changed perspective, providing Los Angeles's micro-club of superrich and superfamous a place to feel normal. In a gated community like this, what may be too much to outsiders is validated by neighbors, whose own choices suggest that huge feels just right.

"When you come here, you can see everyone creates his own environment," Mrs. Medavoy said. "The Stallones' is very Italian. Denzel's is like a small Hotel du Cap. Jami Gertz has a Southern colonial."

Residents insist that their gated paradise is a real neighborhood and a true community, if a wealthy one, with Halloween shindigs for the kids, friendly movie screenings and dinner parties.

"This isn't Versailles, and I'm not Marie Antoinette," insisted Joyce Arad, who might have made the remark because her house, completed in 2003, is a three-story palace built in classical 18th-century French style. The kitchen has two vast stone islands with copper pots hanging around each of them, though Mrs. Arad confesses that she doesn't cook much. Outside is an elegant swimming pool designed to look like the reflecting pond of a chateau, along with several outdoor living areas, with fireplaces and fountains. "I wanted it to be homey and authentic-feeling," she said.

The culture of Beverly Park is secretive, even paranoid, and a couple of residents who gave interviews urged caution and begged anonymity, so as not to arouse the wrath of the homeowners' association. In the center of Beverly Park is an elaborate four-acre children's park, usually empty. Indeed, there are almost no people visible in Beverly Park, except for domestic workers, gardeners and construction workers, as building continues apace on the handful of remaining lots, watched only by the hidden security cameras that are everywhere. Mrs. Medavoy, who once disdained the impulse of the wealthy to hide behind gates, now says she wouldn't live anywhere else. "There is nothing that compares to this in the world," she said. "It would be like the Hamptons, gated."

Created 16 years ago, North Beverly Park began as a 250-acre swath of flat, empty scrub. A pair of developers divided the land into 64 lots of two acres, selling for $3.5 million to $6 million each (though they now go for much more). The location — less than 10 minutes by car to Rodeo Drive — along with the guarantees of privacy, were an immediate draw. The lots sold to Hollywood insiders and stars with big, big money, some of whom have bought additional lots to create compounds.

Even Brian Adler, one of the two developers, has been surprised at the size of the homes. "I purposely cut the lots so they would be two acres, level," he said in an interview. "At that point I wasn't sure if people would be happiest at 12,000, 16,000 or 20,000 square feet. But with the economy doing as well as it has, people built bigger."

He went on: "When you bring in your wish list — a major gym, a major home theater, the wife wanting an office, the husband wanting an office — and then frustration over not using the lot for a garage," you end up with massive homes. That, anyway, is how Mr. Adler ended up building a 10,000-square -foot underground garage in the last spec house he built in Beverly Park, a 35,000-square-foot mansion. The home sold in 2004 for $30 million, the largest sum yet paid for a home in Beverly Park. (He said he was barred from disclosing the identity of the buyer.)

Avi and Joyce Arad moved from Connecticut and landscaped their property not just with full-growth trees but with many tons of dirt to create a hillside for a Provençal-style garden. To the Arads, who made their first fortune from Mr. Arad's toy inventions, Beverly Park was an adjustment from the East Coast sensibility. But they too built a dream house to scale.

"I was kind of shocked at first — how big it is," said Mrs. Arad, a sculptor. "But you get used to it. Now all the closets are full."

"There is a real sense of community here," Mrs. Arad continued. "We know our neighbors. We've had dinner with them: Sumner Redstone and Paul Reiser."

On a recent Friday, Mrs. Medavoy set the table for her weekly dinner and a movie, mostly for neighbors. That night's feature was "The Break-Up" with Jennifer Aniston, just out in theaters, which a messenger from Universal had just delivered in metal movie cans.

Mrs. Medavoy screeched as she glanced at the delivery. " 'United 93'?" she said in horror. "I have 20 people coming over — Sumner, everybody — and they're expecting to see 'The Break-Up.' " She ran after the delivery man, who checked his truck and found the comedy. All was well in the neighborhood.

There is, however, a dark side to Beverly Park, and Jeanette and Robert Bisno — next-door neighbors of the Medavoys — have glimpsed it. In 2002 the Bisnos were sued in Los Angeles Superior Court by the North Beverly Park Home Owners Association for infractions of the community's convenants.

What did the Bisnos do? One big problem was their overdone gates. Also, their dinosaur topiary peeked above their hedge to the street, and there were some problems with "the installation and maintenance of trash cans," according to court papers.

Along with its unique benefits — the exclusive list of neighbors, security cameras, constant patrols by guards — Beverly Park expects residents to abide by a 70-page homeowners' covenant. A sample rule: "No dwelling shall be constructed or maintained on any residential lot which has a floor area less than 5,000 square feet."

In testimony in 2003 by Cindy Adler, a member of the architectural review committee and Brian Adler's sister, the Bisnos' gates were deemed too "Vegas" for Beverly Park.

But the Bisnos's main infraction was installing an eight-foot abstract sculpture in their front courtyard of what some interpret to be a woman on her back with her legs in the air. The Bisnos bought the sculpture, which is called "À Bras Ouvert," or "Open Arms," on a trip to France, where they saw it on the Place Vendôme in front of the Ritz.

The sculpture seemed to offend a powerful member of the homeowners association, Christine Hazy, who lives across the street from the Bisnos in one of Beverly Park's largest estates. (Her husband, Steven Udvar-Hazy, runs a multibillion-dollar airline leasing company, International Lease Finance Corporation.)

In a three-and-a-half-week trial in 2004, accusations flew, feelings were hurt. "Rod Stewart and Sylvester Stallone have, or had, yellow houses," and no action was taken against them, the Bisnos' lawyer complained in court papers.

Mr. Bisno is convinced that Mrs. Hazy has a vendetta against him. "We've had previous disagreements," he said this month. "When we first moved in, she rejected my yellow paint and my gate. And I told her in words and substance that she was crazy."

Mrs. Hazy's lawyer, Marc Rohatiner, said the case was a garden variety instance of a resident breaking the rules, but with someone who would spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees to make the point.

"The kind of allegations Mr. Bisno made is typical of so many cases, but in this case you had someone willing to pursue it to such lengths over something not very significant," he said, though he acknowledged that it was the association that sued Mr. Bisno before sparking a countersuit.

Mrs. Bisno said that her family had been harassed during the dispute, with the sculpture and surrounding gardens toilet-papered, trampled and strewn with debris. Given Beverly Park's security, she wondered, who could have done such a thing?

But in the end the Bisnos lost the case and an appeal. They have filed a motion to vacate the judge's decision.

Still, there may be a silver lining. The Bisnos were in the middle of a divorce at the time of the lawsuit. Now all that seems behind them. They have bought a larger property two doors up from the Hazys, where they intend to build their next dream home.

With all the hassles, they want to stay in Beverly Park? "It's a great place to live," Mr. Bisno said. As for the sculpture, which they will take with them, he said, "Hopefully we'll get the same treatment as the rest of our neighbors. And if we don't, we'll take her to court."

(Los Angeles Times, 7/2/06)   http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/02/fashion/02mansion.html?ei=5088&en=7bd162f6b0ceca7e&ex=
1309492800&adxnnl=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=1&adxnnlx=1171384212-tF7U7y
YFzPUv5uZg2BtQlw

Beverly Park