Is God having financial issues?

Conrad Black selling part of Bridle Property for $7.2 million

Property listed as 24 Park Lane Circle severed from his estate at 26 Park Lane circle, where former media mogul lives with wife Barbara Amiel

Tony Wong/Staff Reporter
Sunday, November 16, 2014

Conrad Black has severed a chunk of his Park Lane Circle estate in the Bridle Path neighbourhood near Bayview and Lawrence. The parcel of land is on the market for $7.2 million.

Fancy having Conrad Black for a neighbour?

The former media mogul has quietly put a portion of his Bridle Path property in Toronto up for sale with an asking price of $7.2 million.

The 2.8-acre parcel in one of Canada’s most exclusive neighbourhoods is described in real estate marketing material as among the area’s “most coveted and admired plots of land” and “the ideal setting to build your dream estate.”

The property is listed as 24 Park Lane Circle. It was formerly part of Black’s existing estate at 26 Park Lane Circle.

Black, also known as Baron Black of Crossharbour due to a life peerage in the United Kingdom’s House of Lords, has one of the largest and arguably the best property in the area at just under 10 acres in size.

The land for sale has been severed from Black’s existing holdings. It does not include his grand Georgian-style home where he lives with his wife, journalist Barbara Amiel.

The land has traditionally been used as the servants’ entrance to get to Black’s estate, according to people familiar with the property.

The sale of the property represents the continued downsizing of the former newspaper publisher, who once owned opulent abodes in New York, Palm Beach and London, where he would fly by private jet to take up residence in each. While he has sold the majority of his private estates, the Bridle Path property where he has lived most of his life seemed to be off limits until now.

The average size of a Bridle Path lot is in the two-acre range, so Black’s remaining property — about 6.5 acres, even after the sale of the land — would still dwarf most of the lots in the Bridle Path and be among the most valuable in the country.

Paul Miklas, a Bridle Path resident and luxury home developer who is building three homes in the area, says he has looked at the property for interested clients.

“There is a lot of interest right now, particularly from Asians who want large lots, and this is one of the few places left in Toronto you can get that,” says Miklas.

Clients typically want to build dwellings ranging from 30,000 square feet and higher, he said.

Broker Barry Cohen would not comment on the listing when contacted by the Star. A call to the Park Lane home was answered by an assistant who said Black was out of town.

Luxury properties have been hot this year. Sotheby’s International Realty recently sold a French manor-style mansion for $14.2 million in the Bridle Path to a mainland Chinese buyer. It is a record for a property less than an acre in size.

Cohen also has currently listed the former four-acre home of developer (and former Bloomingdale’s owner) Robert Campeau for $25 million, which includes an Olympic-sized indoor swimming pool.

But the $7.2-million price for Black’s piece of land is just the starting point. (It was originally listed at close to $8 million, but the price was dropped recently.)

The new owners will also likely have to add at least another $3 to $4 million to build a decent-sized house.

Black’s father, George Montegu Black, was one of the original residents of the neighbourhood. Since then, the list of residents has read like a global who’s who, from musical stars, including Prince and Gordon Lightfoot, to corporate luminaries with names such as Bata, Bassett, Menkes, Posluns and Weston.

Black now spends his time as a talk-show host on Vision TV, and as an author of history books. He recently released Rise to Greatness: The History of Canada from the Vikings to the Present.”

Black was stripped of his Order of Canada by Governor General David Johnston earlier this year. Prior to that, he had spent three years in U.S. federal prison on fraud and obstruction of justice charges before being released in May 2012.

He returned to his mansion on the Bridle Path on a temporary resident permit after he publicly renounced his citizenship, leading Vanity Fair magazine to dub him “Canada’s most famous non-citizen.”

Black’s British colonial-style Florida mansion in Palm Beach (where he did the Vanity Fair interview) sold for the equivalent of $26 million in 2011. He had reportedly earlier sold his London townhouse in Kensington for more than $23.4 million.

Black was once one of the world’s most powerful and influential figures. By the late 1990s, he had more than 500 publications under his banner as he headed the world’s third-largest newspaper group and the largest print-only media operation.