Monday Mish Mash: A-Rod

SELLER: Alex "A-Rod" Rodriguez
LOCATION: Miami Beach, FL
PRICE: $38,000,000
SIZE: 19,861 square feet, 9 bedrooms, 11 full and 2 half bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: In case any of y'all celebrity real estate-o-philes have managed not to hear yet, currently injured New York Yankee Alex "A-Rod" Rodriguez—He of the 10-year, $275,000,000 contract—(not so quietly) slid his brand-spanking new mansion in Miami Beach, FL on the market with a four-bagger asking price of $38,000,000.

In addition to his considerable (and considerably lucrative) baseball abilities Mister Rodriguez is a well-known serial celebrity dater who's famously frolicked with man-magnets like Madonna, Kate Hudson, and Cameron Diaz. So the celebrity gossips allege, the hunky short stop currently gets busy with a professional lady-wrestler named Torrie Wilson. Your Mama had never heard of this Miss Wilson person before but a few minutes on the internets and we learned the bodaciously buxom faux-blond has appeared in her birthday suited glory in Playboy twice and, bless her heart, cultivates and incorporates mutual and forced tongue kissing with both men and woman as part of her professional persona. As, uhm, inneresting as Miss Wilson's tawdry-for-pay-ways may be, it's not her real estate story we're telling today.

Property records Your Mama peeped are frustratingly opaque but The Daily News reported Mister A-Rod paid $24,000,000 in [June] 2010 for the pair of side-by-side Miami Beach parcels that combined total just over 1.1 acres and together stretch 275 prime feet along Biscayne Bay frontage.

Almost as soon as the ink was dry on the deed's dotted line, Mister A-Rod rolled up his renovation sleeves and removed whatever structure(s) did (or did not) stand on the two parcels to make way for an all new, colossal and very contemporary mansion with, according to current listing information, 9 bedrooms and 11 full and 2 half bathrooms in 19,861 square feet of interior space.

The straight lines and flat planes that make up the exteriors volumes is mimicked on the inside with boxy, voluminous and semi-transparent living spaces stripped bare of any extraneous or purely decorative architectural detailing such as baseboards and moldings. There are matte-finished wide-plank white oak wood flooring; long expanses of crisp white walls ideal for displaying Mister A-Rod's growing art contemporary art collection; lofty and sometimes soaring, double-height ceilings; complete walls of metal-framed, floor-to-ceiling windows and doors that reach as high as 12 feet and peel back to connect to the waterside recreation and entertainment areas.

The main floor living/entertaining spaces, all sparely furnished with mostly low-profile and largely white- or putty-colored upholstered pieces, include a boo-teek hotel lobby-like foyer and a spacious but still comfortably scaled living/dining room with two full walls of glass that slide open to the backyard area(s) and third glass wall that glides open to a glass- and foliage-walled atrium. Although no part of the house appears to be particularly formal in listing photographs, the less-formal, family areas include an open-plan kitchen/breakfast/family room; a compact, window-lined television viewing room for two plus a moody, a sexed-up home theater and a cavernous, double-height game room with long, built-in wet bar and entertainment center fitted with (at least) three tee-vees.

Other customized amenities available only to the very rich include a 3,000 square foot sports room/fitness center and a separate gym with steam shower; a commercial-grade elevator for moving large pieces of furniture and artwork from floor to floor; a roof top terrace with glittering views of the bay and Miami's downtown skyline; two gated motor courts and garage space for four cars; and a two-story guest house/poolside lounging pavilion with at least two flat-screen tee-vees mounted on either side of the built-in barbecue.

The 2,200 square foot second floor master suite—all by itself almost the size of the average American home—wraps around the aforementioned glass and foliage-walled atrium and encompasses a bedroom, sitting room, dual bathrooms and the sort of closet space and dressing areas that Your Mama better find  in a twenty thousand square foot pile in Miami Beach with a hefty-hefty-hefty price tag of nearly for forty million smackers. Glass walls around the atrium provide multiple layers of transparency the make it possible to stand in the entirely glass-walled shower in one of the two master bathrooms and see across the atrium and clear through the master sitting room to the sparking Biscayne Bay. It's not a set up for the bashful or corporeally ashamed—there are wonderfully heavy-looking curtains for those folks—but it's an undeniably spectacular (if showy) design conceit.

Naturally, the nearly new mansion comes complete with all the high-tech bells and whistles a rich person can pay for such as automated lighting and climate systems, surround sound throughout the property, and a very serious security system with 16 cameras. Listing information helpfully notes the residence is equipped with high-impact glass and a self-powered generator to withstand the devastating hurricanes that periodically ravage South Florida (and the surrounding states).

Besides the two-story guest house and attached poolside pavilion, the waterside back yard features a deep, shaded outdoor living lounge with fireplace; poolside sunbathing terrace and wide strips of well-watered and -groomed lawns; an au courant vanishing edge swimming pool (and spa); and an second almost all glass pavilion of undetermined purpose (that may or may not be the above-mentioned work out room with steam shower).

Mister Rodriguez seems to be in the mood to shrink his real estate portfolio lately. In early 2011 he paid $5,500,000 on a 3,585 square foot, 35th-floor condo crib at the Rushmore building in New York City that he flipped back on the market 10 (or so) months later with a substantially higher eight million dollar price tag. In April of this year (2012) he sold the 5 bedroom and 5.5 bathroom apartment for $6,600,000 to a former airline executive turned financier.

Two years ago he (and his now ex-wife Cynthia) sold a 9,010 square foot water front residence in Coral Gables, FL for $8,500,000. It was originally listed in fall 2008 with a much higher asking price of $14,876,000. At about the same time in 2008 Mister and ex-Missus A-Rod listed their Coral Gables crib they also hoisted their New York City spread on the the market with a $14,00,000 asking price. The erstwhile couple finally unloaded the 4,600 square foot Park Avenue apartment in March 2009 for $9,900,000.

listing photos: ONE Sotheby's International Realty