Owner of Newport's “$100M Fixer Upper” Has Moved To Hawaii and Spent $300M Buying an Island

Owner of Newport's “$100M Fixer Upper” Has Moved To Hawaii and Spent $300M Buying an Island

Billionaire Larry Ellison may not be too focused on his restoration of Newport’s Beechwood — a storied Newport mansion that has been under restoration for years and at a cost of over $100 million.

GoLocal’s architecture critic Will Morgan recently chronicled Ellison's restoration over the past decade as well as his buying spree in Newport.

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Business Insider reports, “Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison is making the Pineapple Island his full-time home. Ellison revealed last year that he has moved to Lanai, Hawaii, amid the coronavirus pandemic. He plans to use ‘the power of Zoom to work’ from the island, he wrote in an email to Oracle employees, who had been asking about Ellison's plans in the wake of Oracle moving its headquarters to Austin, Texas.”

Ellison owns almost the entirety of Lanai: He purchased nearly 98% of the island in 2012 for a reported $300 million — his purchase included 87,000 of the island's 90,000 acres of land. 

Back in Rhode Island, Morgan recently wrote about Ellison's ongoing Newport project:

Since buying Beechwood in 2010 for $10.5 million, Ellison has spent over ten times that amount restoring the main house, an adjacent carriage, and creating a new Bellevue Avenue gatehouse in the style of the main house. Under the direction of John Grosvenor of Newport Collaborative Architects, the goal is that Beechwood will look as it did in 1881. At that time the thirty-year-old house was restored and enlarged by the Richard Morris Hunt. He was society grande dame Caroline Schermerhorn Astor's favorite architect, as well as the designer of other Newport mansions, including the Breakers and Belcourt.   

Two years ago, Ellison paid $11 million for Seacliff, a ten-room brick house, in a vaguely Norman-Georgian country style. While not one of the more significant Newport houses, it has a stunning Atlantic Ocean view. It also has a starkly modern guesthouse built right into the rocks below Cliff Walk. While it is not known what plans the new owner has for Seacliff, it abuts and thus enlarges Beechwood, the former Astor mansion that is the centerpiece of Ellison's Newport fiefdom. The Beechwood land now spreads from Rosecliff to Marble House.

Read More of Morgan's Column on Ellison's Beechwood Project.