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Thursday, Sept. 25, 1997 - S A N F R A N C I S C O E X A M I N E R |
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Diana Walsh
OF THE EXAMINER STAFF
Singer Linda Ronstadt wants to sell you her lavender Pacific Heights mansion, complete with seven bedrooms, au pair suite, office, stained glass windows and dumbwaiter, for $5.85 million. But don't expect to get that chandelier in the master bedroom: She's taking that with her.
Ronstadt, who bought the Jackson Street house in 1987, has packed up and moved to Tucson, where she was born and raised. The rock singer, who is as well known for her relationship with former Gov. Jerry Brown as she is for singing "Poor Poor Pitiful Me," is now a single mom raising her two adopted children and apparently wanted to be closer to family.
"She's just going back home," her manager, Ira Koslow, said Wednesday. "She loves it (in San Francisco). It's just sometimes you feel like you want to raise your kids where you were raised. It just seems silly to keep two houses."
After living in Los Angeles for 30 years, Ronstadt moved to San Francisco in the late 1980s because she said she never felt at home in Southern California. In an interview with The Examiner last year, she said she had picked San Francisco because: "I like the architecture, and I like that people don't occupy 90 percent of their thinking with whether they have the right haircut, or the right outfit, or whether their plastic surgery is up to date. I find that mentality exhausting."
But there may have been some sentimental reasons behind the move, too: At the time she was dating George Lucas, whose vast film studios are in Marin County.
During the late 1980s and early '90s, she made San Francisco her primary residence, but she bought a second home in Tucson three or four years ago, Koslow said. She then began splitting time between the two cities, with her children spending their early years in San Francisco schools.
In moving back to Tucson, she'll be just one of many well-known Ronstadts in town. Her brother, Peter, was once chief of police, cousin James is head of the city's park and recreation department, and James' son, Fred, is running for city council. When her parents were alive they owned a large downtown hardware store. And the main bus stop in town is known as, what else, the Ronstadt Transit Center.
The turn-of-the-century Victorian she's leaving behind in San Francisco is located across the street from Alta Plaza Park.
The real estate brochure, prepared by Realtor Elizabeth Pfau of Hill & Co., describes the stately home but doesn't mention its famous owner with the beautiful voice, saying only that it was "completely remodeled by present owner in 1988." The four-level house includes seven bedrooms, five full baths, two half-baths, office, powder room, music room, seven fireplaces and "fabulous views." For the kids, there's a playroom and a playhouse in the backyard.
The brochure also doesn't mention Ronstadt recorded "Dedicated to the One I Love," a collection of lullabies for music fans, last year in the house in the presence of her two children, Mary Clementine and Carlos.
The only thing you won't get for your nearly $6 million is the chandelier in the master bedroom hall. That's excluded from the sale, according to the brochure.