Real LI

What a difference a year makes. When last we mentioned Lisa Kerkorian’s 10,000-square-foot barn-style home in Bridgehampton, the asking price was $12.7 million. That was just over a year ago. Today the home is still on the market, now at $7.995 million. The listing agent is Susan Breitenbach of The Corcoran Group.

The 2-acre estate has been on and off the market over the past few years. It had previously been listed with Sotheby’s International Realty for $16.3 million.

The six-bedroom, 7-½-bath home is a mix of old and new; just off the media room is a barn constructed of 200-year-old beams. The home is next to the horse farm owned by Calvin Klein’s former wife, Kelly Klein.

Kerkorian, once a professional tennis player, is the ex-wife of Kirk Kerkorian, who is worth $16 billion, according to Forbes Magazine.

Cookie, the magazine for moms, recently profiled "Lipstick Jungle" star Kim Raver. In it, she talks about her struggle to get her body back after having two children. How did she do it? Lots of exercise -- specifically, workouts with trainer David Kirsch. When she can't sweat in person with him, she does it to his DVDs. She keeps some at her weekend house in Bridgehampton "so I have no excuses," she says.

Modell’s Sporting Goods Chief Executive Mitchell Modell has just purchased a Hamptons home with his wife, Robin, for $6.95 million, according to public records. The Bridgehampton home has seven bedrooms and 7 ½ baths, a pool and tennis courts. It was listed earlier this year at $8.495 million, and the price was later lowered to $7.995 million.

Susan and Matthew Breitenbach of the Corcoran Group listed the property.

You can say Rima Mardoyan-Smyth is a woman with many talents. She’s fluent in more than four languages and when she’s not selling real estate in the Hamptons, something she has done for more than two decades, she’s pursuing her interests, which includes art.

In fact, her work can be viewed in a new exhibit that opens this weekend at Guild Hall in East Hampton. The exhibit, "A Survey of Encaustic Work,” through Nov. 30, will feature paintings that Mardoyan-Smyth did in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. “They are very powerful,” says Barbara Jo Howard, the museum’s director of marketing.

Encaustic is an ancient technique that started in Egypt in which molten beeswax is mixed with resin and pigments to provide color, vibrancy and texture. However, Mardoyan-Smyth says she doesn’t use resin. She makes her own beeswax and pigments and won’t disclose anything more. “It’s a secret recipe,” she muses. The painting is labor intensive, says Mardoyan-Smyth, noting not many people can paint as large as she can.

Mardoyan-Smyth, who works in the Bridgehampton office of Brown Harris Stevens, has been painting for about 32 years. She has been using beeswax in her work for the past two decades.

The opening reception will be from 5 to 6 p.m. Saturday. At 3 p.m. Sunday, art critic Klaus Kertess will discuss Mardoyan-Smyth's work. “I’m honored to have Klaus there,” says Mardoyan-Smyth. “It’s a big thrill.”

Rima Mardoyan's 2008 work "Traveling Fish, which is beeswax encaustic on wood

J.Crew chief executive Millard Drexler is in contract to buy a house in Wainscott for $17 million, a source tells RealLI. The house at 120 Beach Lane is listed for $19 million. The six-bedroom, four-bathroom shingle-style house is between the Atlantic Ocean and Wainscott Pond on a three-acre lot.

Ronald Lauder owns property next door.

Drexler also owns houses in Montauk and Bridgehampton. The agent involved in all three properties was Paul Brennan of Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate in Bridgehampton. He co-brokered Montauk with Linda Stein, who was murdered last year at her Manhattan apartment.

Here are some of the more interesting personalities on Hamptons magazine's list: Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick, Christie Brinkley, Leslie and Chuck Close, Lorraine Bracco, Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos, Isaac Mizrahi, Kim Raver, Allison and Leonard Stern, Camille and Kelsey Grammer, and Edith and Philippe de Montebello.

After famously declaring that she will never marry again, Christie Brinkley tells New York magazine that she plans to move to her Sag Harbor house if, and when, she sells Tower Hill. (The Bridgehampton property is on the market for $30 million.) She bought the Sag Harbor house in 2003. "I just want to be here," she told the magazine. "I mean, look at this. I just want to be here." Brinkley gave the interview at another house, across the street. She bought that one last year for $10 million for her parents. They never moved in; now it's Brinkley's office. Catch up on all her properties here.

Ex-spouses Christie Brinkley and Billy Joel spent part of the July 4 weekend, along with daughter Alexa and a group of family and friends, eating barbecue and “blowing off some steam” at Joel’s harborfront home in Sag Harbor, according to People.com.

Joel purchased the home in 2001 for nearly $8 million according to published reports.
The once-married couple have quite a collection of Long Island houses in their seperate portfolios, including Brinkley’s Bridgehampton estate, Tower Hill, currently on the market for $30 million, and Joel’s Centre Island estate, Middlesea, listed for sale at $32.5 million.

Joel also owns two adjacent homes in Sagaponack for which he paid a total of about $30 million. Brinkley listed another Water Mill cabin for sale last year for $7.9 million before changing her mind and pulling the property off the market.

When Kelly Ripa and husband, Mark Consuelos, head out to the Hamptons, the plan is to have no plan, the actress and star of "Live with Regis and Kelly" tells Hamptons magazine in the cover story of the current issue. “I spend far more time cooking in the Hamptons, where I actually have time,” Ripa says.

According to the magazine, the Ripa and Consuelos and their three children decamp at a year-round house in Bridgehampton, where the newly installed backyard fire-pit is a main attraction. “It’s stone and really nice,” Ripa says. “We have Adirondack chairs around it. We make s’mores and the kids get so excited. Then we put them right to bed since they’re too tired to take a bath after that, and they wake up in the morning and smell a little like smoked hams.” Ripa burns off the s’mores by running several times a week. In the Hamptons, running is, “like a religious experience. It’s so beautiful.”

But don’t expect to see the family out and about. Ripa prefers to spend her Hamptons time at home. “We’re really not on the scene … it seems like we’re everywhere, but we’re not.” Ripa does get out for charity events including her annual stint at hosting the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund’s Super Saturday, which will be held this year on July 26.

Real estate developer and author R. Donahue Peebles, who purchased a 10.1-acre Bridgehampton compound last year for $5.39 million, has just added another East End home to his collection.

Florida-based Peebles will close next week on a $1.91 million, three-bedroom waterfront home in Sag Harbor, just minutes away from his current property. He acquired the house in an estate trust auction. Peebles plans to keep both homes, using the Sag Harbor place as a cabana and guest house, says Lori Barbaria of Prudential Douglas Elliman, who represented Peebles in the purchase of both his Long Island homes. He also owns homes in Coral Gables, Fla., and Washington, D.C.

Of the new property, Barbaria says, “It’s very hard to get a house in that location … They rarely hit the market.” Barbaria says that the house is perched high, affording panoramic views across to Shelter Island and Connecticut. “It’s on the only Sag Harbor waterfront that has a real beach in front of it.”

Peebles is the chairman and chief executive of the Peebles Corporation, a Miami real estate development firm. He is currently developing a $2 billion, 13-acre property near the Las Vegas Strip.

Peebles recently raised more than $300,000 in Miami for Barack Obama's presidential campaign. A source tells REAL LI that there has been talk of a possibility that Peebles will host another Obama fundraiser at his Bridgehampton home.

The Celebrity News Service reports that a Long Island judge has set July 2 as the divorce date for Bridgehampton supermodel Christie Brinkley and husband Peter Cook. "During open court when the judge discussed the issues to be addressed during the trial, both Brinkley and Cook remained stone-faced," reports CNS. "The issues included custody of their children, child support and distribution of assets, which includes several homes, three boats -- including a yacht named Sweet Freedom -- a model airplane and seven watches." Brinkley has her Tower Hill estate in Bri