After a hiatus of more than three months, rock star and songwriter Richard Marx and his former wife, Cynthia Rhodes, later this month will relist their nine-bedroom, 29,475-square-foot mansion on almost 5 acres on Lake Michigan in Lake Bluff for a new listing price of $13.99 million.
The price is $2.1 million less than the mansion’s last listing price of $16 million. Marx and Rhodes first listed the mansion for $18 million in November 2014.
Paul Gorney of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices KoenigRubloff, who is one of Marx and Rhodes’ new listing agents, confirmed the lower asking price. It would make the U-shaped, Georgian-style mansion the second highest-priced residential listing in Chicago’s suburbs — trailing only Michael Jordan’s 56,000-square-foot mansion in Highland Park, which is available for $14.855 million.
Marx and Rhodes’ asking price would be about $1 million more than the third highest-priced suburban listing, which is the $12.945 million price tag for the 20,000-square-foot, French Provincial-style mansion on 8 acres in Barrington that serves as Lucious Lyon’s mansion in TV’s “Empire.”
Even in Chicago proper, higher residential asking prices are scarce. With a $17 million price tag, the International College of Surgeons’ 10-bedroom, 12,000-square-foot mansion at 1516 N. Lake Shore Drive is the highest-priced, Chicago-area residential listing. The only other mansion in the city with a higher asking price than Marx and Rhodes’ mansion is a newly constructed, 14,000-square-foot mansion in Lincoln Park, available for $13.995 million.
Built in 1931 and designed by David Adler for meatpacking scion Lester Armour and his wife Leola, the Lake Bluff mansion originally was part of a 73-acre estate. Marx and Rhodes bought it in 1997 through a trust for $4.7 million and subsequently modernized it. Features include eight full baths, six half baths, 19 fireplaces, a finished basement, walnut parquet floors, a home theater and an attached, 8,000-square-foot studio, which Marx, 52, has used as a recording studio.
Marx, who in December married TV host and model Daisy Fuentes, paid $4.995 million in March 2015 for a four-bedroom, 5,163-square-foot house in Malibu, Calif., according to Variety.
Bob Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.
More Top Picks Best Plasma Cutter Tables For Shops