Merv Griffin’s Former House – and Some Big News!

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The Grim Cheaper and I had a fabulous time in Palm Springs last week celebrating Thanksgiving with my parents – so much so that we have decided to move there permanently!  We have been seriously considering a move to the Desert for a few months now, but finally decided to pull the trigger while driving back to Pasadena last Saturday afternoon and called up our landlord to officially give our 60 days notice.  While I will miss my beloved L.A. more than words can express, I think our being in the desert will do wonders for my dad’s health (not to mention my poor mom’s sanity).  The fact that our new apartment (which we LOVE) is half the price of our current apartment – and twice the size! – AND features a HUGE walk-in closet only sweetens the deal.  (My current closet situation is absolutely pitiful, but I digress.)  And not to worry, my fellow stalkers, my blog is not going anywhere.  We own a condo in Santa Monica that is only rented out part time and we will be staying in it whenever it is free so that I will be able to stalk.  IAMNOTASTALKER is most-definitely here to stay, I promise.  Smile  And now, on with the post!

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A couple of months ago, my mom mentioned that she had seen a real estate listing for Merv Griffin’s former 39-acre estate in La Quinta.  The listing did not cite an address, though, and my mom was desperate for me to track the place down because she could not imagine where an almost forty-acre property could possibly be located in the LQ.  Thankfully, I was able to find the abode fairly quickly via a Google search and, as it turns out, the pad is pretty darn close to my parents’ house.  So I dragged the GC right on out to stalk the place Thanksgiving morning.

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Merv, who had been a frequent Desert visitor in the past, purchased the land for his La Quinta estate while in town for a tennis tournament sometime during the 1980s.   According to a 2006 Palm Springs Life article, he said, “I looked around and thought this would be a great place to bring my horses.  I bought the first and only 80-acre parcel I saw.  It was a disaster — nothing but sand, cactus, a little old motel, and a small lake.  My son asked me, ‘What are you going to do with this?’  And I said, ‘See if I can make Kentucky out of it.’”  Griffin bought up several adjacent plots of land in the following years, eventually amassing a whopping 240-acre compound.  He built a private home for himself on the site in 1986 and the surrounding acreage was transformed into Griffin Ranch, an exclusive equestrian-themed gated community that formally opened in 2007.  And while the Ranch was originally expected to feature 393 custom estates, according to Brad Schmett’s La Quinta real estate website, new construction was halted in 2009 and the fate of future development there is currently unknown.

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Griffin’s ginormous Moroccan-style residence was inspired in part by clothing designer Yves Saint Laurent’s home in Marrakech, which Merv claims to have once snuck into while on a visit to Morocco  (a man after my own heart, I swear Smile).  He commissioned famed interior decorator Waldo Fernandez (who is/was the go-to designer for such stars as Elizabeth Taylor, Sean Connery, and Jennifer Aniston and who handled the 1980s remodel of the Beverly Hills Hotel, which was also owned by Griffin at the time) to style the interior.  Sadly, Merv’s home was gutted in an electrical fire in 1987, not long after it was first constructed, and had to be completely rebuilt.

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Griffin’s former estate, not much of which is visible from the road, is nothing short of spectacular, as you can see in the aerial views below.  In fact, when I first saw the below images I thought I was looking at a resort!  The estate boasts a 5,483-square-foot main house with a 2000-square-foot living room, retractable dome skylight, 20-foot ceilings, and two master suites with Moroccan-style steam showers.  The property also features four detached circular-shaped casitas, a 1,712-square-foot guest house (with three bedrooms and two baths!), separate staff quarters, an equestrian center with a 16-stall stable, a barn, a regulation-sized racetrack (apparently the only one in the entire Coachella Valley), an infinity pool, and a 2.5-acre(!) pond complete with a swan paddle boat.

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Upon Griffin’s passing in 2007, the home became a vacation rental and was then put up for sale this past March for a whopping $14.5 million.  It was relisted in June for $9.5 million and appears to still be on the market today.

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Thanks to fave website The Real Estalker, I learned that Griffin’s former house is also a filming location!  The dwelling was where Slade Smiley and Gretchen Rossi vacationed with Gretchen’s parents, Brenda and Scott, in the Season 5 episode of The Real Housewives of Orange County titled “Let’s Bow Our Heads and Pray”.

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Um, can you say “product placement”?  Winking smile

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The interior of the home was also shown in the episode.

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You can find me on Facebook here and on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER.  And be sure to check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic.

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Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: Merv Griffin’s former house is located at 81345 Avenue 54 in La Quinta.

The Grill on Main from “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills”

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Last month, while watching the Season 2 episode of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills titled “Game Night Gone Wild”, I just about fell over when sisters Kim and Kyle Richards (neither of whom I can actually stand) walked into The Grill on Main – a La-Quinta-area eatery that I had been to just a few weeks prior while visiting my parents for the weekend in the Coachella Valley.  Well, been to and walked out of, I should say.  Winking smile My parents, the Grim Cheaper, and I had headed to The Grill on Main one night to grab cocktails before dinner, but, unfortunately, the only champagne (my mom’s and my drink of choice) that the restaurant served was seriously terrible, so we ended up leaving and going to the nearby Hog’s Breath Inn instead.  But I digress.  Anyway, for my mom’s 60th birthday, which was last Monday, her very best friend, Doina, flew out – from Switzerland – to surprise her and we all spent the week together in the Desert.  One morning during our stay, after grabbing coffee at the Old Town Coffee Company (which has recently replaced Starbucks as my favorite coffee house – I know, gasp!), I dragged my mom and Doina across the street to stalk The Grill on Main.

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The Grill on Main, which first opened in December of 2010 and serves American-style fare, is a super cute little eatery.  And, despite its lacking in the champagne department (which is odd being that the manager is a certified sommelier), my parents, who have dined there several times since, report that the food is quite excellent and reasonably-priced.

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In the “Game Night Gone Wild” episode of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, Kim and Kyle head over to the The Grill on Main to grab lunch while they are on vacation in the Coachella Valley.  During their meal, Kyle, as usual, tries to boss Kim around by telling her that she needs to move into a home that is closer to hers.  Little does she know that Kim is actually planning to move in with her secret boyfriend of over a year.  Ah, the drama!

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While stalking the restaurant, I had incorrectly thought that Kim and Kyle had dined just to the left of the restaurant’s bar area and even took a picture in that spot.

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But the sisters had actually dined outside, on The Grill on Main’s patio area, right in front of the fireplace.  Ugh, I can be such a blonde sometimes!  Winking smile

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Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: The Grill on Main, from the “Game Night Gone Wild” episode of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, is located at 78065 Main Street in Old Town La Quinta.  You can visit the restaurant’s official website here.

The Cliffhouse Restaurant from “City of Industry”

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For our first wedding anniversary this past weekend, the Grim Cheaper and I headed out to the desert to spend a few days at the La Quinta Resort & Club, a historic hotel and popular celebrity hangout which I blogged about extensively last December.  The GC’s brother, who works for the Hilton Hotels chain, which owns the resort, hooked us up royally with a Friends-and-Family discount so we were able to book a suite at an amazingly low rate – a suite that turned out to be the property’s Errol Flynn room!  When I first walked through the doors and saw Errol’s star hanging on the wall, I just about had a heart attack!  (As I mentioned in my December post, in each room where a celebrity has once stayed, the hotel posts a replica of that celebrity’s Hollywood Walk of Fame star.) A super-nice concierge that we later spoke with also informed us that comedian Red Skelton had once vacationed in our suite.   But for some reason, even though Red Skelton was actually honored with two Walk of Fame stars during his lifetime – one for radio and one for TV – only a replica of Errol’s star was posted in our room.

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We absolutely fell in love with our little Spanish-style suite, which featured two bathrooms and two patios and was situated in an adorable trellised courtyard.  So much so that we ended up extending our stay at the last minute by one more night, as neither of us could bear to leave.

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Just to explain the kind of place La Quinta Resort is, we were not only sent a split of champagne and chocolate-covered strawberries on the night of our anniversary . . .

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. . . but after deciding to extend our stay, we were sent more champagne, more strawberries, and a bottle of wine!  All while we were paying a room rate that was almost obscenely low.  Needless to say, the La Quinta Resort & Club is all about customer service.  I absolutely LOVE the place and cannot more highly recommend staying there!  You can read more about Hollywood’s extensive love affair with the hotel in the post I wrote back in December.  And now, on with today’s location!

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Long before they moved to the desert, my parents discovered a La Quinta-area eatery named the Cliffhouse and it quickly became their favorite local spot to grab a bite to eat.  And while I have dined there quite a few times over the years, it was not until just a couple of weeks ago that, thanks to favorite stalking tome Hollywood Escapes: The Moviegoer’s Guide to Exploring Southern California’s Great Outdoors, I discovered the restaurant was a filming location!  As it turns out, the ranch-style eatery was featured briefly in the 1997 heist movie City of Industry!  So when my parents mentioned that they wanted to treat me and the GC to dinner there in honor of our anniversary, I could NOT have been more excited!

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As you can see in the above aerial view, the Cliffhouse is literally built directly into the side of a small cliff that is known locally as “Point Happy”.  The area was named for rancher Norman “Happy” Lundbeck who, in the early 1900s, owned a store and ranch directly across the highway from the small hillside.  Over time, Norman’s homestead, which he dubbed “Point Happy Ranch”, became a popular hitching post and watering hole for weary gold-seekers traveling from California to the Colorado River.  And the small, but prominent hillside eventually became a landmark to those travelers, letting them know that much-needed food and rest was near.  The Cliffhouse restaurant, which cost $5 million to construct, took over 5 years of planning to complete, and involved a hollowing out of a part of the Point, opened in 1992 and has been a desert staple ever since.  The eatery is not only beautiful and incredibly unique in its architecture, but it also serves up some FABULOUS food, especially the fish tacos, which are INCREDIBLE – and I don’t even like fish!  The two-story, 9,000-square foot steakhouse is owned by TS Restaurants and, sadly, the corporation will not be renewing its lease come 2012, which is such an incredible shame I cannot even tell you.  There is hope that a new company will come in and take over the property, keeping the Cliffhouse name and menu, so my fingers are crossed.  I will be extremely sad if this place closes, as will my parents!

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In City of Industry, after being double-crossed and shot at by his partner Skip Kovich (aka Stephen Dorff), bank robber Roy Egan (aka Harvey Keitel) climbs up the retaining wall located on the western side of the Cliffhouse and then proceeds to steal a car from the restaurant’s parking lot.  Immediately after dining at the Cliffhouse, the GC and I ventured over to my parents’ house to watch City of Industry and I have to say that the movie was pretty darn horrible!  We ended up fast-forwarding through the vast majority of it, pausing just long enough to check out the numerous Palm-Springs-area locales which popped up.

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Only the parking lot area and the exterior of the restaurant were shown in the movie.  If you were at all a fan of City of Industry (I’m sure there have to be at least a few of you out there Winking smile), and would like to stalk the restaurant, I would recommend doing so before December 31st, when it is set to close.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

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Stalk It: The Cliffhouse restaurant, from City of Industry, is located at 78250 Highway 111 in La Quinta.  The area where Harvey Keitel climbed up the retaining wall in the movie is marked with a pink “X” in the above aerial view.  The area from which he stole the car is marked with a blue star.  You can visit the official Cliffhouse website here.  La Quinta Resort & Club is located at 49-499 Eisenhower Drive, also in La Quinta.  You can visit the hotel’s official website here.  The Errol Flynn suite is Room 222.