Remodeled Palm Beach house that last sold for $1.17 million in 1993 brings $20 million
Longtime resident Kathy Bleznak has sold, for a price recorded at $20 million, the four-bedroom house she shared with her late husband, Alan, at 960 N. Ocean Blvd. on the North End of Palm Beach.
The house last changed hands for a recorded $1.17 million in 1993, before it was extensively remodeled.
Simultaneous with her house sale, Bleznak bought a four-bedroom apartment, No. 1101, in an off-market sale recorded at $8.2 million in One Watermark Place in West Palm Beach. The condominium tower stands immediately to the north of the Flagler Memorial Bridge that links the mainland and Palm Beach.
The buyer of the house on North Ocean Boulevard was the PB North Ocean Trust, for which the trustee was financial planner and adviser Andrew Cooper, partner at Cerity Partners, a wealth-management and financial-planning firm in New York City. Cooper also manages a trust that owns a house at 208 Sandpiper Drive, which stands immediately west of the home Bleznak just sold, courthouse records show.
Cooper could not immediately be reached for comment.
On North Ocean Boulevard in Palm Beach
The main house on North Ocean Boulevard occupies about one half of the lot, which measures in total about three-fifths of an acre. The property stretches between Sandpiper Drive and Tradewind Drive on the west side of North Ocean Boulevard, directly across the coastal road from properties fronting the beach. The former Bleznak home is just north of the point where the coastal road makes a sharp curve on the northeast side of the Palm Beach Country Club.
Alan Bleznak was single when he bought the house on North Ocean Boulevard. But before he purchased it, he took his future wife to visit the property, Kathy Bleznak said in a 2017 story in the Palm Beach Daily News. She was not impressed with the condition of the Palm Beach Regency-style house — built in 1970 — when she first saw it, but her future husband convinced her that it would be a worthwhile investment.
“He saw things that I didn’t. He said, ‘Do you see that there's a little more than two lots here? That’s the reason to buy — the rest doesn’t matter,’” Bleznak recalled for the Daily News.
But she remained unenthusiastic: "I put my hands over my eyes, and he put a deposit down," she said.
The couple, who married in 1995, carried out a down-to-the-studs renovation and expansion overseen by Alan Bleznak, who died March 2 at 91. For years, he was a key player in his family's real estate business, The Bleznak Organization, which focused on developing residential properties and apartment communities in New Jersey and Maryland.
The Palm Beach house and its separate pool cabana building have a combined 5,361 square feet of living space, inside and out.
Broker Lawrence Moens of Lawrence A. Moens had listed the property for sale May 25 and landed it under contract on June 23, the multiple listing service shows. Moens could not be reached for comment.
Agent Lilly Leas Ferreira of Brown Harris Stevens handled the buyer’s side of the sale. She declined to comment about the sale or identify anyone involved on the buyer's end.
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The house originally was designed by architect Ames Bennett, who specialized in Palm Beach Regency-style, which typically features symmetrical facades, flat roofs and classical elements including columns on the porch and decorative urns at the roofline.
The house is directly opposite Philadelphia Phillies owner John Middleton’s beachfront estate as well as a vacant beachfront lot at 965 N. Ocean Blvd.
Moens' listing described the property as a “development opportunity” and noted the two “buildable lots.” The property, the listing said, is “ready for renovations or redevelopment.”
During their renovation, the Bleznaks reworked the floor plan, added height to ceilings and “sawed off the side of the house and built a new master bathroom,” Kathy Bleznak said in 2017.
Noted interior designer Bunny Williams executed the interior design. The layout includes a living room, library and formal dining room.
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Crews rebuilt the kitchen and extended the poolside loggia to create more space for outdoor living and entertaining.
“The size of our yard allowed us to create (a pleasant outdoor) environment without being on the water, and that was important to us,” Kathy Bleznak previously told the Daily News.
The grounds include an expanse of lawn around the saltwater pool, a rear garden with a fountain and a rose garden behind the cabana. Landscape architect Mario Nievera of Nievera Williams Design planned the grounds, while Ed Lindemann designed the rose garden.
With longtime ties to Philadelphia, the Bleznaks had the Palm Beach house homesteaded as their primary residence in the latest tax rolls.
Cooper, the trustee on the buyer’s side of the sale of the former Bleznak house, is also listed as trustee of a trust that in April 2022 paid a recorded $31.8 million for a Palm Beach house at 7 La Costa Way, courthouse records show. Public records further link the ownership of the La Costa Way house to the Sandpiper Drive house next door to the former Bleznak home. Ferreira has the La Costa Way house — a custom home built in 1996 — listed for sale with town-approved renovation plans for $39.9 million, the multiple listing service shows.
Ferreira handled the buyer’s end of last year's deal on La Costa Way. In that purchase, she negotiated opposite Moens, who represented the seller, Rachel Rudin.
At One Watermark Place in West Palm Beach
Bleznak bought the condo at One Watermark Place from Sharon and Raymond “Ray” J. Milkovich. They had owned the unit since 2009, when they paid a recorded $2.835 million for it, about six years after the building was completed.
Ray Milkovich is president and CEO of NTS Systems, a California-headquartered company based in Anaheim that provides technologically advanced testing and engineering services in a variety of fields, including the space, defense, automotive and industrial industries, its website says. His professional resume also includes leadership positions at Nest Parent Inc. and Aurora Management Partners LLC. He was previously president and CEO at Kaiser Aluminum Corp.
The four-bedroom apartment on the 11th floor has four bedrooms and 5,224 square feet of living space, according to a previous sales listing. The condo had been listed for sale at $11.695 million for about five months beginning in May 2022 but it wasn’t being marketed in the MLS when it changed hands.
Moens represented Bleznak in the deal, his office confirmed. Acting for the sellers were agent Jim McCann and his team of sales associates at Premier Estate Properties.
McCann declined to comment and his clients couldn’t be reached.
With 48 condos, One Watermark Place offers apartments with windows looking out to the Intracoastal Waterway and Palm Beach. Condos on the higher floors offer views of the Atlantic Ocean. The building has its own slips for yachts in the waterway and its common areas and gym recently underwent a recent facelift.
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This story was updated Sept. 7, 2023 — the day the deed recorded for the sale of condominium No. 1101 at One Watermark Place — to add details about that sale. This is a developing story. Check back for updates
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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. Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Daily News: Palm Beach house sells for $20M; it last sold in 1993 for about $1M
