Pssst: If you’ve got 40M to spare then boy do I have the place for you. One of WeHo’s more famous addresses is back in the news and gurl, she means business.
This time we’re talking the full-floor penthouse atop Sierra Towers being on the market for a cool $39.5 million. If that number holds, it would set a new record for an LA condo sale.
The sellers are Dan Fischel and Sylvia Neil, a Chicago couple who picked this unit up at auction in 2021 for $17.5 million and spent the better part of five years and “many, many millions of dollars” — Fischel’s words — finishing it. The apartment was completed earlier this year. Neither of them has spent the night there.
“I just want to leave it as an untouched jewel for the people who are fortunate enough to be the next owner,” Fischel said.
What You’re Getting
The unit takes up the entire 32nd floor of the building at 9255 Doheny Road. Two penthouses combined into one. Roughly 7,400 square feet with three bedrooms, a stone fireplace anchoring the open living and dining area, a kitchen with custom oak cabinetry and a breakfast bar, a gym, and a media room. A 4,000-square-foot wraparound terrace circles the floor. New York firm Workshop/APD handled the renovation. The views run from downtown Los Angeles to the Pacific Ocean. On a clear day, and this is Los Angeles, so occasionally that happens, it’s the whole basin.
How It Got Here
This penthouse has been on a journey. Previous owner Evan Metropoulos, an heir to the Twinkies fortune, assembled the unit by combining two separate penthouses he bought between 2012 and 2015 for close to $30 million combined. He listed it in 2018 at $58 million. That number was a stretch, the listing stalled almost immediately, and he cut the ask to $38 million. By 2021 the unit was still unfinished, Metropoulos had moved on to a Beverly Hills mansion, and the penthouse went to a no-reserve auction in raw, gutted condition.
Fischel and Neil were in Los Angeles during the pandemic, thinking about a pied-à-terre. Their daughter was living here at the time. They toured the unit, liked what they saw, heard about the auction, and put in a bid mostly out of curiosity. Their $17.5 million offer, submitted before the auction formally opened, won.
“There was a lot of publicity that it was a very attractive price,” Fischel said. “Obviously, we were thrilled.”
Listing agent Linda May of Carolwood Estates said the original $58 million ask is what poisoned the well. It was considered significantly overpriced from the start, lost momentum fast, and never recovered. The unfinished condition didn’t help either. Not every buyer wants a multimillion-dollar renovation project on the 32nd floor.
Why They’re Selling
Their daughter moved back to Chicago. That’s essentially it. Fischel is the former dean of the University of Chicago Law School and president of consulting firm Compass Lexecon. His wife Sylvia Neil also served as associate dean there. They have no other ties to Los Angeles and already own a home in South Florida.
The apartment was completed a few months ago. They’ve never slept there.
The Record It’s Chasing
The current Los Angeles condo sales record is $39.2 million, set in 2025 when former nail-polish executive Miriam Schaeffer sold her unit at the Century condominium. The Sierra Towers penthouse is listed at $300,000 above that.
May told the Journal she doesn’t expect it to sit long. “When something comes on, it usually sells immediately,” she said. “There is a wait list of people who want to be at Sierra Towers.”
Sierra Towers was designed by architect Jack A. Charney and completed in 1965. Thirty-one stories of mid-century modern sitting above Sunset Boulevard at the border of West Hollywood and Beverly Hills. Past and current residents include Sandra Bullock, Courteney Cox, Katy Perry, Sidney Poitier, and Joan Collins, among many others. The building is the tallest residential tower in the greater Los Angeles area by altitude relative to sea level, and under current zoning nothing like it could be built there today.
The penthouse has never been lived in. Someone is about to fix that.
Related Coverage
Bizarre Suicide at Sierra Towers as Man Jumps From 27th Floor — A death at West Hollywood’s most famous address.
WeHo City Council Gives Condo Owners a Pass on Earthquake Safety — What it means for high-rise residents in West Hollywood.
Neil Sedaka Dead at 86 — West Hollywood Remembers a Music Legend — The singer and longtime West Hollywood figure has died.
The interior in its current form doesn’t look like $39.5 million but the view is stunning.
They have no clue what $40 mil can buy in LA…a massive Bel Air pad AND a Malibu beach house with $20 million in the bank.
These are the kinds of out of town drifters(delusional and greedy) that have ruined LA housing for locals.
How about an apartment in a high floor on Park La Brea for, I dunno, $2-3k per month.
The Sierra Towers was built as an apartment comples in the late 60’s and was part of a group called Helmsley Spears. Harry Helmsley the husband of Leona Hellmsley. A friend of mine rented a beautiful two bedroom unit there on the 19th floor for $750. a month. Lots of inflation.