Herbalife’s Dick Marconi lists animal-filled retreat for $23 million

For the final three many years, Dick Marconi has been crafting a personal paradise within the hills of San Juan Capistrano, filling the 1,225-acre ranch with homes, animals, statues and some other amenity that got here to thoughts.

Now, he’s procuring it round for $22.95 million.

Marconi made his fortune by way of the multilevel advertising and marketing large Herbalife, creating the dietary firm with Mark Hughes within the Nineteen Eighties and supplying the model’s traces of dietary supplements, nutritional vitamins and weight-loss merchandise.

He picked up the property for $1.2 million in 1994. On the time, it held cattle pastures, prickly pear cactus and a Tuscan-style house constructed within the Nineteen Seventies by “Countless Summer time” director Bruce Brown. Marconi envisioned a Tuscan-style village and spent the subsequent few years bringing in natural world, together with olive bushes and zoo animals.

On the coronary heart of the compound, there’s a 51-acre unique animal reserve, and the $22.95-million price ticket features a giraffe, a dozen zebras, six African antelopes, a kudu and a llama — in addition to a pair of desert tortoises that hang around by the barn, in keeping with the itemizing. For fishing, there’s additionally a lake stocked with bass and catfish.

Guarded by stone lions and reached by a bridge, the primary home spans a single story and contains ornate fireplaces, wood-coffered ceilings and a light-filled loggia. Subsequent to that, there’s a 2,100-square-foot workplace, museum and chapel full with a full-size duplicate of Michelangelo’s well-known Vatican Metropolis sculpture Pieta. It weighs 10,000 kilos and doesn’t include the house, however will be bought individually.

Bronze and marble statues pop up throughout the property; notable examples embrace a wild boar and 15-foot-tall sculpture of the Roman god Neptune. There’s additionally an aviary, canine kennel, greenhouse, observatory, wine gazebo, helicopter pad, 23,000 lemon bushes and 1,000 olive bushes imported from Italy.

Constructions apart from the primary home embrace a two-story guesthouse and health club, 2,200-square-foot storage, 2,200-square-foot workshop, 2,100-square-foot worker constructing and a generator constructing.

Jody Neal of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices California Properties holds the itemizing.