George Clooney’s neighbors ‘upset’ over actor’s ‘annoying’ renovation on LA mansion

by Admin Thu 03 Sep 2020, 12:37

Interesting how a British newspaper can't spell 'neighbours'? Anyway, wow, that's an awful lot of construction taking place there!

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[size=40]'NOT HAPPY'
[size=40]George Clooney’s neighbors ‘upset’ over actor’s ‘annoying’ 18-month long multimillion-dollar renovation on LA mansion[/size]

[size=23]EXCLUSIVE
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Alex Diaz
Katy Forrester

3 Sep 2020, 0:28
Updated: 3 Sep 2020, 3:12

GEORGE Clooney’s neighbors are complaining about noise caused by his Hollywood mansion upgrade – and they still have at least six more months of misery ahead, The Sun can exclusively reveal.
The two-time Oscar winner, 59, is carrying out a multi-million dollar renovation at his property in Studio City.

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George and Amal are renovating their huge house in Studio City, Los Angeles
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Work is coming along slowly but surely on the land [size=16]Credit: Coleman-Rayner
It includes adding three new buildings – among them a “proposed play cottage” thought to be for the three-year-old twins Ella and Alexander he shares with wife Amal.
The work has been going for around a year and new photographs obtained by The Sun show the progress that has been made.
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However, a worker revealed this week it is expected to continue for at least another half a year.
It is bad news for neighbors of The Descendants star who have taken issue with the disruption caused by the building project.

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Aerial pictures show building work taking place at Hollywood A-lister Clooney's home Credit: Coleman-Rayner
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A worker claimed the renovation project will take another six months Credit: Coleman-Rayner
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Aerial photographs of the progress made on the land in Studio City Credit: Coleman-Rayner
One local, who asked not to be named, told The Sun: “Some of the neighbors are upset about the noise, there are too many trucks coming early in the morning.
“The workers and trucks park up and down the street and take up all the spaces in front of other people’s homes, so that’s annoying too.
“It was worse before because there were cement mixer trucks coming and going and they made a lot of noise.
“But people are not too happy about the situation and are looking forward to the project being finished.”

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George and wife Amal have homes all over the world Credit: Getty Images - Getty
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Snaps show the original home, club house and new construction area Credit: Coleman-Rayner
Clooney has applied to build a funicular, an exterior pizza oven and a water feature on the property, according to planning documents.
Builders are also putting in a new steel staircase, extending the property’s deck with trellis and revising its windows.
Clooney bought the 7,354-square-foot six-bedroom villa for $2.2 million from Fleetwood Mac singer Stevie Nicks as his career began to take off in 1995.

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The work has already been going on for more than a year Credit: Coleman-Rayner
Their extensive renovations will reportedly cost the actor over $1 million.
The famous silver fox spent over $33,000 on building permits alone.
Six of the permits were issued by the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety on July 2019.
Another two were granted just after Christmas on December 27, 2019.

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The outdoor lounge and dining area at George and Amal's lavish home Credit: Coleman-Rayner
Aside from his mansions in California and England, the actor also owns property in Manhattan and Lake Como, Italy.
When the news that Clooney was renovating his former bachelor pad emerged in February, neighbors speculated that he was returning to live in the US to pursue a career in politics.
The staunch Democrat hosted fundraisers for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton at his Studio City home in the past.
Amid the pandemic, he was the host of a virtual fundraiser which raised $7million for Joe Biden following the Democratic National Convention.[/size][/size]

by party animal - not! Thu 03 Sep 2020, 12:56

Mmm, well the neighbour quoted here was the same one (with the same quote I believe!)

who was quoted in when the story first came out. Understandable tho - I have new

neighbours who just took eighteen months to turn their smallish home into a suburban

palace - and constantly had trucks parked in front of our drive - with no apology.

The thing about George's home there is that from the aerial shots you can see that it backs

the canyon - and a walk I think, so the neighbours are really spread out....Didn't he always

say that he preferred to invest in property (land) rather than the stock market?

by Admin Thu 03 Sep 2020, 13:02

I believe he did, PAN.

Given the cul-de-sac he lives on, i must be a nuisance for the neighbours, although I'd guess the worst is over by now.

by PigPen Thu 03 Sep 2020, 13:56

I'd be more than annoyed. Over time I've come to believe he truly only cares about himself, contrary to what we'd like to think....he's George Clooney and do as he damned well pleases and the hell with the rest of the world. For example, but not limited to..
1. the construction at Sonning
2. this construction
3.the fundraiser at LA home for Obama
4. late parties at Como. Tell me that racket doesn't echo all over the place at 1AM

Yeah yeah I know, they are his homes and he can do what he likes. However, he's not a good neighbor and I'd hate to see him move into my neighboehood.

by annemarie Thu 03 Sep 2020, 14:01

I think it has taken this long because of Covid-19 all work had to stop. And Los Angeles has strict rules on codes and everything has to be inspected and if not correct changed which I'm sure takes more time. Knowing George he will make it up to the neighbors.
I'm also sure George isn't the only one to have construction work done. There is no way to do construction work quietly .

by Admin Thu 03 Sep 2020, 14:04

That's kind of like saying that nobody is ever allowed to improve their home, isn't it?

[maybe I'm taking this the wrong way, as I'm in the process of updating my own home - although not anything near the Clooney-scale of building, I'm sure my neighbours didn't enjoy my electricians boring channels in the wall for rewiring]

by party animal - not! Thu 03 Sep 2020, 14:09

Pigpen, number 4 - you would hear very little. It's an estate on a lake, the houses are all

similar with same size grounds - and he asks neighbours to any bunfights he may have....

May disturb the odd fish in the lake if he dives in of course.....

by annemarie Thu 03 Sep 2020, 14:13

If you bought your home and want to change it that is your right. The only reason we are hearing about this is because it is George I'm sure many of those homes are old and have to be renovated.
George also seems to buy older homes and they all have to be renovated.

by PigPen Thu 03 Sep 2020, 14:38

there's a big difference between renovating, like Katie is
doing, and building a new compound. I'm not saying he doesn't have the right to do what he wants on his property. He just doesn't consider how his need to be George Clooney affects others. Maybe I'm not expressing it properly, but it is my opinion that he has , or perhaps has always been, become "all about me" . PAN, neighbors did complain- it somewhere on COH- and he paid them to stay elsewhere during the building of his little cottage.

Can ya tell I'm a little unimpressed with Mr Clooney of late... lol

by Admin Thu 03 Sep 2020, 14:57

PigPen wrote:Can ya tell I'm a little unimpressed with Mr Clooney of late... lol

Oh, I think I'm getting an inkling! Wink

But seriously, what would you have the man do? Live in homes that just aren't suitable for him? And are you imagining that none of his neighbours have ever had building work done too?

by annemarie Fri 04 Sep 2020, 12:14

George is simply dong what others do , maybe or maybe not on a bigger scale. I doubt that the other neighbors who do construction take into account their neighbors. He obviously loves that home and wants to make it work and comfortable for
his family and guests. I think the fact he didn't go out and buy something grander says a lot about him he appreciates what he has and is willing to make changes to keep it.
Le't be honest there is always someone who will complain it is just human nature. Whether the work took a month or years it really wouldn't matter.

by party animal - not! Fri 04 Sep 2020, 15:50

Just a bit of background to the guys and photographers who created this story:

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by annemarie Fri 04 Sep 2020, 16:53

Inside Coleman-Rayner, the Ruthless Paparazzi Who Almost Derailed the Royal Wedding

SNAP!
Coleman-Rayner have a reputation for scandalous snapping—their notoriety sealed by their photographs of Thomas Markle Sr. which caused a pre-royal wedding media firestorm.
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Lloyd Grove

Editor At Large

Updated May. 18, 2018 11:03PM ET / Published May. 18, 2018 3:41PM ET

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Photo Illustration by Lyne Lucien/The Daily Beast

When Prince Harry finally marries Meghan Markle at Windsor Castle on Saturday, it’ll be no thanks to the celebrity gossip and picture agency that staged cheesy photos of Meghan’s dad, Thomas Markle Sr., and nearly derailed the royal wedding.
Coleman-Rayner LLC— a scrappy Los Angeles-based company co-owned by two British veterans of the tabloid wars, writer/editor Mark Coleman and paparazzi photographer Jeff Rayner—is at the epicenter of a lurid scandal that has reached the far corners of Planet Earth and overwhelmed advance coverage of the happy day on front pages and television shows from England to Australia.
For Coleman-Rayner, it’s the most damaging controversy since the agency was unmasked last fall as having conducted negative research in late 2016 on one of Harvey Weinstein’s rape accusers, actress Rose McGowan.
The agency did this ostensibly on behalf of one of Coleman-Rayner’s clients, American Media Inc. executive Dylan Howard, who passed the agency’s work product on to Weinstein, telling the Hollywood mogul in a leaked email: “I have something AMAZING.”
To which Weinstein replied: “This is the killer. Especially if my fingerprints r not on this.”
“They are not,” Howard emailed back (and later claimed in a chagrined statement, after his dodgy conduct was exposed by New Yorker writer Ronan Farrow, that he only “unwittingly” played a role “in Mr. Weinstein’s well documented manipulation of his business and personal relationships in his efforts to combat his accusers”).
According to a source close to former Coleman-Rayner picture editor Glen McCurtayne, McCurtayne, appalled that the agency had been involved in the potential smearing of rape victims, resigned in disgust and became a born-again Christian; he now spends his days doing volunteer work and studying the Bible.
“None of this information was ever published, and it was gathered well before there was any knowledge of the gross accusations against Weinstein,” Mark Coleman emailed The Daily Beast. “AMI declined to publish the information as it did not want to impugn the reputation of an accuser.”

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“Sources say that she’s upset and distressed by the news. It comes just days before one of the biggest and most important events of her life.”[/size]

Although Coleman-Rayner finds itself once again on the hot seat, the current staged-photo flap is mild by comparison—and at least as uncomfortable for Meghan Markle.
“It’s obviously and understandably a difficult time for Meghan,” a vexed and bespectacled young man in a three-piece suit—“ABC News Royal Contributor” Omid Scobie—told Good Morning America’s Robin Roberts this week in a plummy English accent. “Sources say that she’s upset and distressed by the news. It comes just days before one of the biggest and most important events of her life.”
GMA’s 7 1/2-minute-long segment (an eternity in network morning TV) was typical of the breathless saturation coverage of the staged photos and other entertainingly off-kilter events surrounding Markle Sr., the former Suits star’s 73-year-old father, along with Meghan’s zany extended family.
Notable in this rogue’s gallery of undesirable relatives is her estranged half-brother, Tom Markle Jr., who has gone out of his way to trash Meghan in tabloid interviews (irked that he wasn’t invited to the wedding) and recently shared with In Touch magazine his embittered handwritten letter to Harry urging the prince to call off the nuptials to a “jaded, shallow, conceited woman that will make a joke of you and the royal family heritage.”
Enter Coleman-Rayner. Mark Coleman, an alumnus of AMI’s Star magazine and Bauer Publishing’s equally down-market Life & Style, and Jeff Rayner, who’s been toiling as a celebrity photographer since he arrived in the United States on a foreign journalist’s work visa in the late 1990s, teamed up to launch the small agency in 2009; these days it remains lean and mean, boasting around a dozen photographers, reporters, and support staff operating from an office in L.A.’s San Fernando Valley.
It’s a hardscrabble, Darwinian business. According to insiders, the staff photographers generally are paid a nominal base salary of between $30,000 and $50,000—barely enough to live in L.A.—plus a 25 percent commission on the sales of their photos, and the company doesn’t provide health insurance benefits.
By most accounts, AMI—which owns the National Enquirer, Us Weekly, Globe, and OK!, among other titillating publications—is Coleman-Rayner’s most important client, and the agency services the various AMI titles with words and pictures.
Coleman-Rayner is on a high-five-figure monthly retainer with the publisher (ranging from $70,000 monthly, the industry scuttlebutt, to “less than $50,000/month,” the estimate of an AMI insider) and Jeff Rayner has been a close friend of AMI’s chief content officer, Australian import Dylan Howard, since the latter was running AMI’s L.A. bureau nearly a decade ago.
The scandal surrounding Thomas Markle Sr., otherwise known as the “Markle Debacle,” began around two months ago with a Coleman-Rayner paparazzo named Karl Larsen—notorious on the celebrity “pap” circuit as one of its more ruthless practitioners.
The 49-year-old Larsen is best known for his 2007 photo of a just-arrested Paris Hilton sobbing in the backseat of a cop car, another photo of an enraged Mel Gibson in 2010 (taken after Larsen mercilessly taunted the allegedly anti-Semitic actor, demanding a refund for all the tickets he’d ever bought to see Gibson’s movies), and for getting flattened during a violent scuffle last year at LAX with One Direction pop star Louis Tomlinson.
This past March, Larsen hunted down the elder Markle, a retired lighting director for General Hospital, near his home in the beach community of Rosarito, Mexico, 30 miles south of the U.S. border. Larsen snapped Markle’s picture in various unflattering stances, looking obese and disheveled.
Days later, Jeff Rayner showed up and somehow persuaded Markle—who’d been under siege for months by pitiless paps, despite Kensington Palace’s stern warning to leave the old man in peace—to pose for a series of candid-seeming photographs.
Rayner—who, like Colman, is in his mid-forties—is known as a wily chap of easygoing charm, a fondness for high-status luxury (he proudly drives a Porsche), and a sharply honed instinct for the jugular.
“That’s a guy who will sit on a mountain for five days and get the picture of the skier a mile away who’s involved in some kind of scandal. He’s an absolutely fantastic pap,” said a veteran tabloid journalist who has worked with him. (Like nearly everyone interviewed for this story, this person asked not to be named.)
Coleman—described by colleagues as “a control freak” with a hair-trigger temper, although he usually apologizes in soothing tones after losing his cool—“is a very slick businessman, and he has an extremely good feel for the market,” said the journalist. “This isn’t an agency that goes around doing pro bono stuff for the good of America. It’s an old-fashioned tabloid operation.”
Not that everyone is a fan.
“They’re just scummy paparazzi,” said Los Angeles attorney Neville L. Johnson.

Last year, Johnson sued Coleman-Rayner for libel on behalf of his client, fitness guru Richard Simmons—along with American Media Inc. execs David Pecker and Dylan Howard and AMI’s National Enquirer and Radar Online—after the agency provided photos and reporting that the publications utilized to claim erroneously that Simmons had “has undergone shocking sex swap surgery” and was living as a woman named Fiona. (A judge dismissed Simmons’ lawsuit—and recently ordered him to pay the defendants $130,000 in legal fees—on the grounds that the articles, though bogus, weren’t defamatory.)
Meanwhile, Jeff Rayner’s pitch to Meghan Markle’s beleaguered dad has been the subject of intense speculation in the tabloid biz since the pictures were first published by London’s The Sun May 4 and subsequently other outlets that licensed them from Colman-Rayner for an estimated total of £100,000 (the equivalent of around $135,000).
Several former Coleman-Rayner employees told The Daily Beast that if Rayner paid Markle—a standard practice in such cases—it was likely a relatively small amount in cash, maybe a few thousand dollars. (TMZ reported that he received $1,500 “plus a small percentage of the royalties.”)
It’s also likely, said the former Coleman-Rayner employees, that Rayner used Larsen’s unflattering photos as leverage and, in a classic ploy, offered to withhold them in exchange for the senior Markle’s cooperation with pictures that would depict him in an attractive light.
In an email Friday, Coleman called the speculation “totally false,” and added: “The part alleging we offered to hold back unflattering photos is totally false.”
The Daily Beast addressed all questions via email to both Coleman and Rayner.
Coleman didn’t respond to a question concerning Rayner’s arrangement with Markle, but emailed that generally, “Coleman-Rayner does not comment on its newsgathering or its business relationships with publishers.” (Coleman—who is clearly unnerved by the media attention and refused to go on the record in a lengthy, pleading phone call to this reporter—was on a business trip with Rayner in Australia, where the agency has serviced the celebrity magazines New Idea and Woman’s Day.)
In any case, Coleman-Rayner’s published photos in The Sun—initially considered a much-prized exclusive in the frenzied media run-up to the wedding vows—showed Meghan’s dad exercising outdoors with tiny weights (ostensibly getting in shape for walking his daughter down the aisle at Windsor Castle’s St. George’s Chapel).
He was also pictured being measured for a royal wedding suit inside what looked like a tailor’s shop, sitting at a desktop computer at an internet café to read a story about his daughter’s marriage, and stopping by a local Starbucks to peruse a coffee-table book on British landmarks.
Coleman-Rayner’s triumph was short-lived, however, and the agency quickly became the target of the pre-wedding media mania this past weekend, when the Mail on Sunday shattered the rival Sun’s scoop with a juicy investigative blockbuster headlined “Royal Wedding scammers! Meghan Markle’s father STAGED photos with paparazzi…”
The Mail’s exposé, relying in part on closed-circuit camera footage showing Markle and Rayner apparently collaborating inside Rosarito’s Omega internet café, detailed how they recruited a teenage party-goods shop clerk to play the tailor (using a tape measure supplied by Markle), after discovering that the suit rental store Rayner planned to use was closed; and that the bogus exercise shot was apparently staged at a garbage dump “away from prying eyes.”
“It was really strange,” the pretend tailor, David Flores, told the Mail, adding that Rayner tipped him $15 for his trouble. “This big American guy [Markle] got the measuring tape out of his pocket and he was saying things in English. I don’t speak good English, but I understood what he wanted me to do. The photographer he was with stepped back to the street and started taking pictures.”
The story added pointedly: “The revelation that Mr. Markle has been co-operating with a paparazzo behind the backs of his daughter, Prince Harry and Kensington Palace officials will cause huge embarrassment to the Royal Family in the run-up to the wedding.
“It will be galling for Harry who, in a BBC documentary last year, hit out at the paparazzi for the way in which they pursued his mother, Princess Diana. She was killed in Paris in 1997 after being chased by photographers.”
The Mail’s scoop seemed to throw all of Fleet Street into a kind of mass hysteria, even as elder Markle, according to friends and family, told them he was “deeply embarrassed” and “now feels like a complete fool” for playing along with Rayner, the Mirror reported.
“He’s telling friends he feels scammed by those who did the pictures but more worryingly he now has to face the Queen and the rest of the Royal Family… He’ll hate the fact that people think he has betrayed them and he’ll be fearful what they think.”
In due course over the next few days, Markle gave a series of interviews to TMZ, Harvey Levin’s gossip site that regularly pays for news and tips, in which Meghan’s dad confided that he had suffered a heart attack—triggered, he said, by Tom Jr.’s letter to Prince Harry although the photo flap might have contributed to his chest pains this past Monday—and would undergo cardiovascular surgery to implant a stent, and thus would be forced to drop out of the wedding.
“I’m just too ill to walk Meghan down the aisle,” screamed the Mirror’s front-page headline, under the blood-red all-cap message: “DAD’S HEART OP SETBACK.”
“Sadly, my father will not be attending our wedding. I have always cared for my father and hope he can be given the space he needs to focus on his health,” Meghan Markle said in a statement provided by Kensington Palace Thursday. (The palace revealed Friday she would walk herself down most of the aisle, with future father-in-law Prince Charles escorting her the last few steps.)

Coleman-Rayner’s website—blazoned with the motto, “We pride ourselves on original, accurate reporting coupled with fantastic photography”—touts its “formidable reputation as the agency people trust. Staff pride themselves on their professionalism coupled with a personal approach, as well as compassion and empathy when handling delicate stories and demanding situations.”
The agency has posted a series of testimonials from the relatives of famous people and C-list celebrities, to wit: “Trustworthy and great to work with” (Ronald Fenty, Rihanna’s father); “Great job, accurate and considerate of us old folks” (Diana Dill and Donald Webster, Michael Douglas’ mother and stepfather); and “I trust Coleman-Rayner implicitly” (Coco Austin, model, burlesque dancer, and TV star).

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“In order to sell photos and copy to demanding clients, former employees said, the agency was forced to supply content that was increasingly edgy to the point of callous.”[/size]

The kind and gentle advertising belies Coleman-Rayner’s reputation for hard-nosed aggression in a cutthroat business that, just like the purveyors of mainstream journalism, has suffered financially from the digital onslaught, as well as from social media services such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram that give celebrities the ability to control their images and information.
In order to sell photos and copy to demanding clients, former employees said, the agency was forced to supply content that was increasingly edgy to the point of callous. Sometimes it was simply wrong, as when Coleman-Rayner produced a story that purported to discover the whereabouts of Olivia Newton-John’s long-lost boyfriend.
“Olivia Newton-John’s Runaway-Lover Found Alive!” exclaimed the headline in the Nov. 27 National Enquirer, one of the tabloids, including AMI’s Star magazine, which misidentified Canadian Wes Stobbe as Patrick McDermott, the missing man in question.
“Let’s get mistakable: Tab magazines confuse Manitoba man for missing boyfriend of Olivia Newton-John,” said the Canadian Press story about the embarrassing blooper.
It was professionally risky to decline distasteful assignments, such as the December 2015 order to go to Las Vegas and secure a “last photo” of Celine Dion’s husband Rene Angélil, who was dying of throat cancer. One photographer left the agency, a source said, shortly after refusing that challenge.
In another instance, said a source, Rayner and reporter James Robertson (now the top editor of AMI’s OK!) talked their way into the Florida hospice where they secured a photo and pained interview with Tom Cruise’s stepfather, Jack South—the inspiration for a series of depressing and intrusive accounts that continued to be published weeks after the poor man’s death.
“Cruel Tom Cruise Turned His Back On Dying Dad,” claimed the headline in the National Enquirer.
The saddest moment, at least for Coleman-Rayner reporter Hugo Daniel, came in February 2014, six months after he persuaded Julia Roberts’ younger half-sister, Nancy Motes, to sit for a lengthy interview, Motes’ first-ever, which focused on the movie star’s alleged penchant for fat-shaming her.
“I had £20k gastric band op after sister Julia’s jibes about my weight,” said the headline over the resulting Aug. 9, 2013, story, which ran under the byline of Pete Samson, U.S. editor of The Sun (with the credit line “ADDITIONAL REPORTING: Hugo Daniel”).
The story did little to enhance Motes’ already tense relations with her big sister. Suffering from depression, she was found dead in her bath tub surrounded by pill bottles; the death was ruled a suicide.
Daniel was so distraught by the incident that colleagues were instructed never to mention the interview around him, said a former Coleman-Rayner employee.
“Hugo was devastated,” said a colleague. Reached by The Daily Beast, Daniel—who has left Coleman-Rayner to freelance—declined to comment.
“It seemed that over time, it was getting a little bit desperate,” said one of several former employees who have departed Coleman-Rayner in recent years—in part, this ex-employee said, because staffers have been increasingly required to engage in what is generally known in the business as “smash and grab”—that is, snapping pictures of people at their worst, and taking advantage of often naïve celebrity kinfolk, often elderly, to get them to dish dirt with no concern for the consequences.
Said the former employee, “There were things that we’d be asked to go and do, and that wasn’t why I got into the business.”

by Way2Old4Dis Fri 04 Sep 2020, 17:39

Oh, ca-phooey.

The area in Studio City where George lives has a low ownership turnover; in other words, they upgrade instead of buying elsewhere. Plus, you really have to be going out of your way to be disturbed by construction noise on a "neighbor's" property. The houses ain't that close, and they're built to keep the outside noise out.

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George Clooney’s neighbors ‘upset’ over actor’s ‘annoying’ renovation on LA mansion