Eric and Wendy Schmidt’s $100M Los Angeles party palace revealed
The wife of a former Google exec fighting a plan to make California’s housing more affordable is using her $110 million mansion purely for functions — not even living there.
The Los Angeles estate is larger than the Taj Mahal and has been transformed into a party palace for a “green” mega-billionaire’s nonprofit empire. Now she’s teamed up with actress Jane Fonda to preserve onerous environmental reviews that make California housing difficult to build.
Wendy Schmidt and her husband, e-Google CEO Eric Schmidt, splurged on the outlandish former home of famed producer Aaron Spelling, dubbed “The Manor,” last year.
But the power couple won’t be living in the 56,000-square-foot, 14-bedroom and 27-bath estate — as it’ll only be used for philanthropic fundraisers, a source revealed to the California Post.
The Holmby Hills manse is undergoing renovations, with property records showing a slew of permits filed since last year to install a solar-friendly roof, rework the HVA
The couple has also re-christened the 5-acre, 123-room party pad “594,” the Wall Street Journal reported.
The Schmidts — who are die-hard environmentalists with multiple properties in New York, London, Miami Beach and Montecito — plan to host lavish nonprofit functions at the palatial show-home as Wendy rallies opposition to Prop. 45.
The measure, supported by the California Chamber of Commerce and fellow Google co-founder Sergey Brin’s Building a Better California, would expedite onerous environmental reviews that critics say have made housing, transit and other infrastructure too costly and difficult to build.
Wendy teamed up with Fonda two years ago to fight oil drilling off the California coast after the industry attempted to roll back coastal buffer zones.
The pals then spun up Clean and Healthy California, an environmentalist PAC that raised millions from a who’s who of Hollywood and Silicon Valley titans.
Fonda and Schmidt co-hosted an arts benefit at posh Gagosian gallery in Beverly Hills that raised $14 million for the cause, according to a press release.
San Francisco philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Steve Jobs, and venture capitalist John Doerr kicked in a cool $500,000 each for the anti-oil campaign.
Actor Sean Penn, Baby2Baby executive Kelly Sawyer Patricof and Maria Shriver, ex-wife of Arnold Schwarzenegger, gave $1,000 each, while actress Kyra Sedgwick kicked in $100.
Clean and Healthy California appears to be using leftover funds from the campaign to oppose Prop. 45, contributing more than $7 million since June to nix the reform that’s designed to make housing and other developments easier to build.
Wendy is a lead opponent of the No on Prop. 45 campaign, contributing more than $5 million to the effort to kill the reform.
Prop. 45 supporters argue it will streamline California’s notorious layers of red tape, but critics like Fonda have labeled it a plot to pollute the environment.
Other opponents include the lefty union Building and Construction Trades Council and a collection of labor and community groups.
The Schmidts founded the Schmidt Ocean Institute and Schmidt Sciences, supporting oceanographic and scientific research with the aim of building a “healthy, resilient, secure world for all.”
The couple has also provided major financial support to Advocacy Action Fund, which bankrolls environmental campaigns and other left-of-center causes.
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