Fox News' Bret Baier, wife ask town to OK new security gates for $37M Palm Beach home

Palm Beach homeowner and Fox News political anchor Bret Baier this month made some national news headlines himself, having co-moderated three Town Halls in Des Moines for the network as a preview to the Jan. 15 Iowa presidential caucuses.

The week before the Town Halls, Baier made headlines in Palm Beach when he discussed the 2024 race for the White House — and former President Donald Trump’s divisiveness among voters — during a sold-out talk Jan. 2 at the Society of the Four Arts.

All of which may make a recent request to Town Hall for two new driveway gates at the Palm Beach house Baier shares with his wife, Amy, on Wells Road seem like small-news potatoes indeed.

But in appearance-conscious Palm Beach, any change to a house’s exterior can generate controversy, even when the request comes from a celebrity seeking to enhance security at an estate.

As other homeowners — including Hollywood icon Sylvester Stallone — have learned the hard way, driveway gates can be contentious projects for town officials, including the volunteers who sit on the powerful Architectural Commission.

Commissioners are known to scrutinize every detail of a proposed gate, since it will be one of the first things passersby notice from the street.

In 2021, for example, it took two appearances before the design board — and a redesign — before Stallone and his wife, Jennifer Flavin, won the board’s approval for a replacement driveway gate at their North End estate.

Commissioners had described the first gate design for the Stallone property as foreboding and out of scale.

FROM THE 2021 ARCHIVES: No peeking! Sly Stallone’s Palm Beach renovation, including driveway gates, earns approval

The board has also looked askance at requests for gates in neighborhoods where most of the homes don’t have them. It those cases, gates can send an unwelcoming signal that makes the neighborhood appear less friendly, commissioners have told applicants.

Fortunately for the Baiers, the design board had few reservations at its most recent meeting with the gates proposed for the couple’s house at 125 Wells Road on the North End.

“There’s a lot of gates on Wells Road,” designer Keith Williams of Nievera Williams Design assured the panel before presenting the design Dec. 15.

Bret Baier used a trust in his name to buy the Palm Beach Regency-style house for $37 million in July, property records show.

The gates will be added to driveway columns that are already standing on the property, Williams said.

PRIVATE SALE: Fox's Bret Baier buys Palm Beach house for $37 million on Wells Road

The look of the metalwork on the gates and front door was inspired by a design the Baiers saw in Paris “and fell in love with,” Williams added. “We tried to replicate that.”

Commissioner Richard Sammons said he was “fine” with the design, but suggested that it could be refined a bit. He said the scrollwork on the top and the bottom shouldn’t necessarily be identical. “But I have no problem with it in concept,” he said.

Williams responded that he would restudy the design during the engineering process.

After about 2 minutes of discussion, commissioners unanimously approved the project in a 6-0 vote.

Commissioners, who were considering the item at the tail end of a multihour meeting, joked about the short time it took to approve the project, saying it might be a record.

Timing is relative, Commission Chairman Jeff Smith implied in a quip: “It happens to old men with babies. They grow up so slowly,” he said.

At the same meeting, as previously reported by the Palm Beach Daily News, the board approved a security gate for house near the public dock on the North End at 1616 N. Ocean Blvd. That decision came after the board learned that trespassers visiting the dock had become a nuisance for the homeowner.

The Wells Road house is one of two home the Baiers’ have bought in Palm Beach. The couple just sold, for a recorded $13.49 million, a house they bought for in March 2022 at 244 Fairview Road for a recorded $12 million.

They purchased the Fairview Road house from a company controlled by fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger and his wife, Dee Ocleppo.

Shortly before they acquired their larger house on Wells Road, they listed the Fairview Road property for sale. Priced at $15.9 million through broker Christian Angle of Christian Angle Real Estate, the house landed under contract on the day after Christmas, the MLS shows. The sale closed Jan. 12, according to the MLS.

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This story was updated Jan. 16, 2024, to add information about the the sale of 244 Fairview Road.

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Darrell Hofheinz is a USA TODAY Network of Florida journalist who writes about Palm Beach real estate in his weekly “Beyond the Hedges” column. He welcomes tips about real estate news on the island. Email dhofheinz@pbdailynews.com, call 561-820-3831 or tweet @PBDN_Hofheinz.

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This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Daily News: Fox's Bret Baier's $37M Palm Beach home OK'd for new security gates