Gary Baker and Karin Upton Baker's Elizabeth Bay penthouse abode finally sells
Karin Upton Baker's Elizabeth Bay dormer pied-a-terre, has been sold four years after the collapse of her husband Gary Baker's speculative property development empire.
Title Tattle gleans it has been bought for just a little more than $5 million by a company directed by Phillip Wolanski, along with Melbournites, Stewart Baron and Sam Alter in a mortgagee sale by the lenders previously known as Challenger Managed Investments. The exchange took place earlier this month, with no settlement details yet available. The purchasing company, 27 Billyard Pty Ltd was only set up in mid-April by the veteran developers. Wolanski is known in the prestige neighbourhood for his Belltrees project.
The Bakers' then home, a mansard-roofed Billyard Avenue, Elizabeth Bay penthouse, had been initially listed for sale in 2010 as the couple fought litigation from lenders who claimed they were owned $18 million.
Upton Baker remains the managing director of French luxury-goods house Hermes's Australian operations where she has been for a dozen or so years. The indefatigable Karin Upton Baker was previously viewed as the magazine editor from Central Casting with her designer wardrobe, the Joh Bailey, Double Bay blow dry along with an apparent charm that had magazine advertisers eating out of her gloved hands. Hearst Magazines even had her fill in when Liz Tilberis, editor of US Harper's Bazaar, died in the late 1990s.
Gary Baker's three year bankruptcy concluded this week, his regularly sighted Rolls Royce driving seemingly just one of the quirks of the bankruptcy system.
Spotted around Camperdown in recent times, Gary Baker burst onto the eastern suburbs property scene in the brash late 1980s heydays when directing the aptly named Dynasty Pty Ltd, before adding Dredge & Barge Pty Ltd, followed by Pile & Bucket Pty Ltd.
The delayed sale was in part due to trying to align the strata plan in the sales contract with the final design of the neo-classical multi-levelled apartment that was their ever-enlarging home for two decades.
Gossip columnist Annette Sharp wrote in 2007 that the couple had then quietly put their Elizabeth Bay property on the market seeking $16 million for the three-level penthouse apartment through agent Jennine Leonarder-Collins before withdrawing it days later.
It came with rooftop garden, lap pool, billiards room, three bedrooms, Roman-style bathhouse and fleet parking. There was also Karin's department-store style wardrobe.
