Inside The Doomed Bel-Air Mansion Abandoned By Gigi And Bella Hadid’s Father

From a distance, this vast structure perched on the edge of the Bel Air hills looks like it will one day be fit for a king. But moving closer, you’ll notice there’s not a construction worker in sight. Tarpaulin flaps in the wind. Giant squares in the front remain gaping and windowless. And the building materials are strewn about the place – almost as if the builders popped out for lunch only to never return. So, how did a house with such magnificent potential end up in such a state? Well, it seems scandal follows closely behind wealth...

Famous daughters

The building is owned by Mohamed Hadid, father to supermodels Bella and Gigi. Back in the 1980s he made a name for himself as a property developer – and an incredibly successful one at that. As a one-time refugee from Palestine, he didn’t move to the USA until he was 14 years old. Since then, though, Hadid has certainly lived the American Dream – until this building began to cause him problems, anyway.

Faint echoes of wealth

Despite its current condition, the home still has faint echoes of the incredible riches that built it. Hadid, it seems, has had expensive taste ever since the very beginning of his career. And why not? He was just 20 years old when he invested in a Greek nightclub and started to watch the money roll in. Later, he branched out into real estate – as well as having a family, of course.

Hadid family

Did you know that Bella and Gigi aren’t the only Hadid kids? There are five of them in total. The two supermodels have a younger brother called Anwar, whom you might have seen on Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. And they also have two half-sisters called Marielle and Alana via Mohamad’s first wife, Mary Butler.

Family values

The fact that Hadid has two supermodel daughters has never bothered him. “My parents were liberal,” he told Vogue magazine in 2020. “We were raised to do whatever you can and whatever you want, as long as you are safe. I let my kids do the same. I get a lot of heat. ‘How do you let your daughters walk around half-naked?’ It bothers me to hear it, but I’m always very kind.”

Highest paid models

No one can really argue Bella and Gigi are in the wrong business – judging by how much money they’re making. Bella is one of the highest paid models in the world with an estimated net worth of $25 million. While Gigi is apparently worth even more – a whopping $29 million. And being the partner of singer Zayn Malik won’t hurt her bank balance, either!

Spawling mansions

Bella and Gigi naturally have incredible houses of their own now, but the place where they grew up wasn’t too shabby either. They spent their childhood days in a massive Beverly Hills mansion built, of course, by their father. It’s the sort of luxury home you can barely fathom unless you’ve seen inside it.

Sharing the space

Luckily, the mansion popped up on the show Secret Lives of the Super Rich in 2017 and everyone got to see Hadid’s handiwork for themselves. The 35,000-square foot Beverly Hills house boasted – among other things – a Parisian style dining room, multiple bedrooms, a home cinema and a walk-in wine cellar. “Wow” isn’t the word.

Complete with a ballroom

And the home, which had the name of “Le Belvédère” was designed for entertainment of the most luxurious kind. In addition to all those other amenities, it had a ballroom which could host over 200 people, just in case the family felt like throwing a party. And outside there was a massive swimming pool to enjoy in the sun.

Signature design

The mansion also featured Hadid’s signature, something he put into every house he designed, a feature called the “Moroccan room.” This is an underground hidden space designed for relaxing in the most luxurious way possible. Most likely his doomed Bel Air mansion was meant to have something similar.

Renovations galore

These days, Gigi and Bella have their own houses. Gigi owns two: a Pennsylvanian ranch and a $4million apartment in New York City. She often posts pictures of the NY place on Instagram, so her fans get to see the bright and luxurious interior. The model renovated it herself back in 2019.

Eccentric details

The apartment is full of slightly eccentric details that somehow all come together and work. Take the kitchen – this might be Gigi’s favorite area, since she loves to cook. She came up with an incredibly smart way to add spatters of color: the island unit features colorful selections of pasta behind every glass door.

Big city penthouse

Bella Hadid’s place is something else, too. In 2019 she spent $6.1 million on a New York penthouse, doing it up with the most fashionable interior design. But then by 2021 she’d put it back on the market again – that’s the sort of thing you can do when you’re rich.

Those are some high ceilings!

Presumably Bella and Gigi and their siblings still dropped into their father’s place and childhood home. But in 2018 things got interesting there. That year – with many eyes on him thanks to the aforementioned building scandal – the mogul sold the colossal Le Belvédère place to British developers Richard and Ian Livingstone.

"Scaling down"

Then Hadid moved to a smaller – by rich person standards, anyway – Beverly Hills house. So these days, according to public records, he’s living in a $4.5 million house in the area named Beverly Hills Post Office. It’s still a lovely place of course, but much more modest than the previous “Le Belvédère.”

Getting the dirt

But in 2019 the real estate website Dirt reported something interesting. It said, “A peek at records reveals the [Post Office] house was purchased from a longtime Hadid business associate, who himself picked up the property just one year ago for about $4.3 million from Tanya Moreland King, a woman who is currently facing up to 117 years in prison for allegedly masterminding a $40 million medical insurance fraud scheme.”

Hollywood scandal

So it seems like scandal follows Hadid wherever he goes, whether he’s responsible for it or not. And not so long ago he was embroiled in a fraud case which involved a massive Hollywood name – Sylvester Stallone. In 2012 Stallone filed a lawsuit against him which made some pretty big claims.

Contract disagreements

Stallone claimed that he’d hired Mohamed Hadid to work on his house, but he lost millions of dollars because of what he called Hadid’s “fraudulent scheme to profit from construction.” He accused the contractor of “fraudulent concealment, breach of an oral contract, negligence and disgorgement of compensation.” But it doesn’t end there. 

Active restraining order

Yep, the case got pretty nasty. Because a year later in April 2013 Hadid filed a restraining order against the movie star, claiming that Sylvester Stallone had threatened to smash his head with a baseball bat. But then, that exact same month, Stallone suddenly dropped the lawsuit and the matter appeared to be settled. Good old Hollywood lawyers, eh?

Escalation

But then came the Bel Air house scandal, and it got bigger and bigger until no-one could ignore it. And it all started back in 2011 when Hadid decided to build a 14,000-square-foot house with a certain flair to it. Neighbors, who coincidentally included Star Trek’s Leonard Nimoy, nicknamed it “Starship Enterprise.” And that’s not a compliment. 

Upsetting the neighborhood

You see, the project grew until it wasn’t taking up 14,000 square feet anymore, but 30,000. And the neighbors started to get angry. Stories spread that Hadid didn’t have the proper permits for the work, had gone beyond certain boundaries, and was causing damage to the area. Nancy Walton Laurie, the heiress to Walmart, was especially furious.

Building walls

Walton Laurie claimed that when working on the Bel Air mansion, Hadid caused serious damage to a tree belonging to her. The developer built a new retaining wall, she said, and during construction cut the roots to her prized eucalyptus tree. She wanted the wall to be removed, and also wanted a whopping $90,000 for the tree.

More allegations

Ah, rich people problems... And they started to get worse. Because Carole Cramer, a one-time singer with the Tommy Dorsey Big Band, told the Daily Mail newspaper in 2015 that Hadid had stolen land from her for the mega-mansion. Her home was closeby to Hadid’s project. So the allegations just kept piling up.

Going before court

And it all properly kicked off come 2016. Because that year Hadid was hauled before a court and pled no contest to charges concerning constructing his building illegally. He received 200 hours of community service – and then the FBI got involved, investigating allegations of some serious bribery.

"Paying" the city

The allegations appeared to center around bribing city officials... in one way or another. Because during a deposition in 2018, a city investigator claimed that although there was “not necessarily” evidence of bribes, some people might have been given “items of value” in connection with the mansion.

Bribery allegations

Investigator Randolph Osbourne said during the deposition, “I advised the FBI. I met with them. They wanted the case and they’re currently investigating it.” He added that, “additional information might come in that other [city] employees are involved.” Hadid himself has always claimed that he wouldn’t pay a bribe even if approached for one.

Permits revoked

That same year Hadid’s neighbors decided to sue him over the building of the house. By this point all permits had been revoked, and the unfinished mansion was just standing there. The neighbors demanded that the building be pulled down altogether, because according to them it hadn’t been safely constructed.

Questions of safety

The neighbors – two couples specifically – claimed in their lawsuit that they were in “constant fear” of the mansion and the hillside it sat on, simply collapsing down on them. They also said that their “privacy and serenity are invaded by the illegal and unsightly structure looming above them.”

Official statement

The attorney for the couples, Victor De la Cruz, made a statement to the media. He said, “Mohamed Hadid has made a mockery of the city’s laws and the safety of his neighbors, and astonishingly the city of Los Angeles has turned a blind eye. At this stage, the only way to bring this illegal mansion into compliance is to tear it down and start over.”

Unfairly targeted?

But Hadid claimed in the press, in response, that he was the victim of a “witch hunt.” The house wasn’t unsafe, he told the Los Angeles Times newspaper, and it was “totally signed off by every single [building] inspector.” He also said he originally pleaded no contest to the charges simply for the sake of “moving on.”

Not a good look

Yet Hadid might not have actually done the community service he was sentenced for, or so it’s suggested. The neighbors who turned against him have pointed out that Instagram photos appeared to show Hadid in Luxembourg at the time he was supposed to be working. One witness, according to the Los Angeles Times, claimed that Hadid had sent one of his security guards to do the work instead – and didn’t pay him for it.

Political issues

Still, Hadid has constantly claimed that he did nothing wrong. In 2020 the California Supreme Court decided that the house would indeed have to be demolished, and he responded with fury. He told the Daily Mail that he was being victimized for being Palestinian-American, and suffering a “political lynching.”

Putting the saga on paper

And he was so furious that he was going to chronicle the whole story even. Hadid said, “I’m going to write a book. I swear to God, I know it sounds like fantasy, but it’s reality. It’s a real thing...Have you ever heard of any house in Bel Air or in Los Angeles which has been demolished? Never, never. I’ll call the book Travesty... Extortion and Injustice. It’s a saga.”

Funding the demolition

By the end of 2020 Hadid was claiming in court that he was broke, and had no money to pull the massive mansion down. He said in a declaration in November, “The stigma and expense in this matter and the criminal matter have seriously damaged me and, at 72, it is not as though I can start over. I have no present nor presently foreseeable potential to fund the demolition now or ever.”

Downsizing lifestyle

Other projects Hadid had been overseeing went wrong and left him in debt, he said. The developer declared, “My financial predicament seems surprising to some, including the plaintiffs who follow me on social media. I have drastically downsized my lifestyle, moving from a 48,000-square foot home to a modest ranch-style home which was purchased at no money down from an acquaintance.”

"Intentionally deficient"

The lead attorney for the neighbors, Gary Lincenberg, refused to believe these claims. He said in court that Hadid’s declaration was “blatantly and intentionally deficient.” But either way, the building had to come down. And officials said that it had to happen fast before the soil started to shift underneath it.

Calling race into question

In December 2020 Hadid spoke to Los Angeles Magazine about the issue. He once again reiterated that everyone involved in the case was simply out to get him. In fact, he especially blamed one neighbor, Joseph Horacek – but he did retract his earlier statement to the Mail about the accusations being racially motivated.

"Not someone who is lacking"

The magazine’s interviewer noted that Hadid was sitting in “a chandeliered dining room adorned with pricey artwork” while telling his side of the story, and didn’t appear to be “someone who is lacking.” But as Hadid went through photos of the half-built Bel Air mansion he said, “I’m so sick of this house.”

Property buyer

Yet in May 2021 there was finally an indication that the building would be taken off his hands. That month the New York Post reported that a buyer – someone willing to purchase the property and tear it down themselves – had finally been found. And whoever they were, it seemed they were unwilling to reveal their name to the press.

More than its worth?

And now that this considerable hurdle has been gotten over, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens next. The buyer, whoever they are, will have to spend $5 million just to knock down the original mansion before building anything new. But chances are we’ll hear more from Hadid about the whole scandal one day – especially if he writes that book.