...that Legend Point, basketball legend Michael Jordan's deservedly but not so humbly dubbed seven-ish acre estate in the leafy, well-to-do Chicago suburb of Highland Park (IL), failed to sell at yesterday's globally publicized auction?
Mister Jordan custom built the 56,000 square foot mega-mansion—it sort of looks to Your Mama like an upscale pharmaceutical research center—and put it on the open market in early 2012 with an asking price of $29 million. Nobody bought it. Almost a year later the price tag of Mister Jordan's nine bedroom and 19 toilet residential monument to wealth and success was slashed to $21 million, a undeniably drastic price cut that also failed to flush out a serious buyer.
Mister Jordan's next real estate move was put the decidedly contemporary but still palatial property up for auction with a reputable real estate auction house with a reserve price of just $13 million and then publicize the shit out of it.
Alas, as first reported by the property gossips at the Chicago Tribune, all the tongue wagging by property gossips, a video tour with Willie Geist on the goddamn Today Show, and the severely reduced minimum bid all failed to attract a financially qualified buyer who not only has 13 or 15 million clams to spend on a house and wants to live in Highland Park but is willing to take on the extreme maintenance issues and costs associated with owning a house of this magnitude.
Mister Jordan's spokesperson told the Chicago Tribune that Mister Jordan will re-group over the holidays and sort out his real estate options as they pertain to Legend Point after the new year.
A few of the massive manse's notable features include a double-height formal living room larger than some hotel lobbies, an ultra-modern imported kitchen, a trophy room, a beauty salon, a movie theater, and a 1,000 bottle wine cellar. There's also a lower level cigar lounge with walk-in humidor, an upstairs gentleman's lounge with doors that were originally in the original Playboy Mansion in Chicago, and—natch— a professional quality, full-court indoor basketball court and a commercial-scaled fitness center.
In addition to vast, tree-ringed lawns, a private pond, and a putting green, there's a stunning, perfectly circular if somewhat civic-looking dark bottom swimming pool with an off-center but also perfectly circular island of well-watered and perfectly-clipped lawn connected to the "mainland" terrace by a sleek arched bridge.
Despite the warm-hearted holiday seasons that are upon us Your Mama would bet both our long-bodied bitches, Linda and Beverly, that several if not scads and scores of the children feel the awful but inviting tug of celebrity real estate schadenfreude over Mister Jordan's Legend Point woes. However, puppies, we're certain Mister Jordan could give a shit because he's rich as the damn pope. According to Forbes he still hauls in an estimated $80 million a year so, even thought we're sure he'd prefer to sell, he can well afford to keep and maintain his super-sized house in the 'burbs of Chicago house for as long as it takes until someone comes along and takes its high-maintenance hulkitude off his hands.
A brief (and very possibly incomplete) run down of Mister Jordan's residential real estate portfolio includes a 28,000 square foot custom-built compound in a swanky, guard-gated golf community in Jupiter, FL; a pair of penthouse pads in downtown Charlotte, NC—where he owns the Charlotte Bobcats; an 8,000 square foot ski chalet in Park City, UT; and a 12,000_ square foot lake-front mansion in Cornelius, NC that he scooped up in February of this year (2013) for $2.8 million.
video: NBC News