The giant former home of Tony Pritzker, the Los Angeles-based brother of Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and former U.S. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, is going up for sale imminently, for a figure reported to be above $150 million.
The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that the house, roughly 50,000 square feet on 3 acres, has been the subject of a protracted battle between Pritzker and his former wife, Jeanne Kriser Pritzker, who separated in 2022.
The mansion’s hilltop site has a spectacular view, one real estate agent who’s been inside told the Journal: “You feel like you’re floating in the view.”
The home, in an area known as Beverly Hills Post Office, includes a main house that has at least a dozen bedrooms and a “large, high-ceilinged atrium” and surrounds a central courtyard, the Journal reported. “Fronted by a fence up to 8 feet high in places, the estate also has a tennis court, guesthouse, staff quarters and a detached recreation room and home theater,” according to the Journal. There’s a bowling alley and an infinity swimming pool with a view of the downtown Los Angeles skyline.
Guests at parties in the home have included Al Gore, Jane Fonda and Tom Brady, according to the Journal.
The number of full-time staff for the property has sometimes been more than two dozen, it says.
The couple, who married in 1989, completed the behemoth hilltop home in 2011. After their marriage unraveled 11 years later, the Journal reports from court documents, Jeanne stayed in the home and Tony moved out, later buying a $19.5 million condo about three miles away.
Jeanne soon learned — to her surprise, according to court documents — that the house and its contents were owned by “a complex web of trusts and limited-liability companies. Moreover, Tony’s lawyers said Jeanne wasn’t entitled to live in the house because she wasn’t a beneficiary of the trust that owns it.” She had evidently believed the estate was marital property to be divided 50/50 between the divorcing spouses.
The Journal story does not say whether she will receive any portion of the proceeds from the sale of the mansion. If it sells near the asking price, it will be one of the highest-priced homes ever sold in Los Angeles, the article says.
Jeanne Kriser Pritzker, who grew up in the Chicago suburbs, and Tony Pritzker — who appears to have grown up in Northern California, like his brother JB — ultimately settled the divorce for an undisclosed sum, according to the Journal.
With that settlement, the estate is expected to be put up for sale. Los Angeles real estate sources told the Journal that the asking price is likely to be $150 million to $200 million.
Tony Pritzker, whose net worth Forbes estimates at $4.1 billion, runs a private equity firm, the Pritzker Group, where J.B. Pritzker was also involved before he was governor.