Forty-five minutes into a mostly restrained interview, Ardie Tavangarian reached into his right pocket, pulled out a sturdy black cellphone, and placed it on the gorgeous mango wood table between us. The developer hit play on a saved audio message, and the baritone voice that entered the room—raspy and impossibly enthusiastic—was unmistakable.
“Ardie, you’re just such a superstar—congratulations, brother!” Tony Robbins began, the self-help guru’s monologue coming fast and breathless. “I love you so much. I’m so proud of what you built and how you built it, with such elegance and such integrity, and you do things at just an incredible level of quality. I can only imagine what you’re going to do to these homes and how you’re going to transform them.”
Robbins left the voicemail earlier this year, soon after Tavangarian had closed on one of the splashiest deals of his career: the acquisition of four adjoining Bel Air properties from Elon Musk, who famously relocated to Texas.
From Friend to Mentor: The Influence of Tony Robbins
Tavangarian became friends with Robbins decades ago after renovating Robbins’ early 20th-century Spanish-style castle in Del Mar, a home Robbins later sold for $2.1 million in 1997. The two have traveled together, and Tavangarian recently invited Robbins to stay in one of his properties.
The connection may seem odd—Tavangarian, silver-haired, short, and stout, is soft-spoken and discreet, a near perfect inverse of Robbins’ larger-than-life, fire-walking stage presence—but the developer credits his friend Tony, particularly his teachings on environmental psychology, with influencing his own career.
Robbins, Tavangarian said, “helped me become more focused on people versus the dollars.”
A Career Defined by High-End Projects
In a career spanning four decades, the 63-year-old founder of West Los Angeles-based Arya Group has developed dozens of ultra high-end projects, including residential homes, public works, and resorts. Recently, he’s built and sold some of the most spectacular—and expensive—houses Los Angeles has ever seen, including a Bel Air mansion that sold for $75 million in 2019 and a Pacific Palisades mansion that sold for $83 million in July.
He promises to transform the former Musk properties, which he acquired for a combined $62 million, into a sustainability-oriented, humanity-advancing project worthy of the association with the SpaceX founder.
A Quiet Master of His Craft
An architect by training, Tavangarian has worked with luminaries such as Frank Gehry and Richard Meier. His properties have been tied to stars like Elizabeth Taylor and Jackie Collins and moguls such as Jeffrey Katzenberg and Peter Morton. In July, he was photographed alongside Jennifer Lopez, who toured the site of a new project. Some of his recent works have even achieved their own celebrity status: an Architectural Digest video of his Sarbonne Road mansion racked up nearly 20 million views.
Yet Tavangarian himself has remained mostly unknown, which suits him just fine. He rarely gives interviews and is happy to let his work do the talking. But L.A. developers who can command north of $50 million for their projects constitute a very small tribe, and his understated persona stands in sharp contrast to the frequent headlines and controversies generated by some of his notoriously bombastic contemporaries.
A Unique Background and Vision
Decades before he was quietly building California dream homes for A-listers, Tavangarian was fascinated by kites. The son of a military judge, he grew up in Shiraz, Iran, a provincial capital known for its wine and literary history. Iran was enjoying a petroleum-fueled economic boom in the 1960s and early 70s, and Iranians were rapidly embracing Western-style culture and consumerism.
But a young Tavangarian still had to make his own toys. He spent hours jury-rigging scooters and fastening airplanes out of styrofoam and rubber bands. He’d devise homemade kites out of thin paper and bamboo, attaching a candle on the inside so the toy would light up the night sky like a flying lantern.
“The vision of creating things—you know, it’s always been natural,” he said.
Education and Early Career
Tavangarian moved to Battle Creek, Michigan, as a high school exchange student. While taking classes at the University of Michigan, he met his wife, Tania, a Tehran native and broker who’s long served as Arya’s CFO. The couple has four daughters, two of whom work as brokers at Williams and Williams Estates Group, headed by power couple Branden and Rayni Williams, who have represented Tavangarian’s properties, including the Pacific Palisades mansion.
He moved west in his early 20s to attend the Southern California Institute of Architecture, the now-acclaimed design school that had opened just years earlier and was then operating out of a rented Santa Monica warehouse. “We actually built the school,” Tavangarian said. “And I was basically living under a drafting table.”
He founded Arya at 22, initially running the firm from a tiny space inside a parking structure to tout a coveted Beverly Hills address. The location paid off: the young designer, a devotee of icons like Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright, did some work for the property’s landlord, who subsequently hired starchitect Richard Meier. Tavangarian submitted sketches.
“And then we clicked,” he said of Meier, “because I knew his discipline better than a lot of people in his own office.” Tavangarian was soon hired to build the Meier-designed Norman and Lissette Ackerberg House, an all-white contemporary mansion in Malibu’s Carbon Beach. (In 2017, Oracle boss Larry Ellison bought the 7,700-square-foot home for $48 million.)
It was Meier’s first Southern California project—and Tavangarian’s big break. Arya went on to work on other projects with Meier, including galleries at the Getty Museum. The firm also led major hospitality projects, including the redevelopment of the Bernardus Lodge in Carmel Valley and Hotel Maya in Long Beach. It managed construction of the Freedom Sculpture, the glittering statue in the middle of Santa Monica Boulevard unveiled in 2017 as a gift to Los Angeles from the Iranian-American community.
Relationships and Controversies
For Jackie Collins, Tavangarian designed a 25,000-square-foot white modernist home, based on an image of a pool in a David Hockney painting. “It took a while to capture these measurements and work with Ardie on the details,” the novelist told the Wall Street Journal in 2014. “Everything came out perfectly.”
Not every client has been so enamored. In 1996, Cher hired Arya for $4.2 million to build a house in Malibu, but the relationship soured. Cher terminated her agreement with Arya, and the firm accused her of misappropriating their design plans and spreading “false and damaging rumors.” Arya sued for breach of contract, and a California appeals court eventually ruled that Arya could enforce its claim.
In 2013, Tavangarian was in contract to buy Jack Roth’s Pacific Coast Highway property for $20 million. The relationship turned contentious, with Tavangarian’s lawyer terminating the contract, then proposing a new sales agreement at a lower price with Roth as a development partner. Tavangarian imposed a mechanic’s lien to assert control over the property. The parties fought in court for years, eventually reaching a settlement.
Praise and Recognition
By and large, Tavangarian has engendered a reputation as a quiet, hyper-focused, gifted developer. “He’s a very nice man,” said Mauricio Umansky, founder of The Agency. “He’s a very detail-oriented human being—he definitely has a little bit of ADD, as I think most incredible men do. But he’s just talented, he’s creative, and I think he’s a good guy.”
“He’s an artist as much as he’s a businessman,” added Santiago Arana, a high-end specialist at The Agency who’s known Tavangarian for 15 years. “His motivation is to materialize what’s in his head and deliver that to whoever’s going to be the owner of those projects. Whatever comes with that—the money, the fame, and everything else—is secondary to him.”
The Future of Luxury Development
Luxury spec development is a high-margin but notoriously risky enterprise, where even a single failed project can end up costing its developer tens of millions of dollars. Niami and Mohamed Hadid, who has also been battling a litany of legal issues, have both recently been forced to place projects in bankruptcy; in March, Hankey Capital, which loaned Niami $82.5 million to build “The One”—the developer’s white whale, a 100,000-square-foot Bel Air megamansion that Niami once hinted would list at $500 million—served a notice of default in an attempt to force a sale. No buyer appears to be in sight.
Tavangarian has, so far, managed to avoid a similar fate. He bought 822 Sarbonne Road, the Bel Air mansion, out of bankruptcy for $11.1 million in 2014, then took on financing that included a $16 million construction loan from West Hollywood-based First Credit Bank, a frequent lender. In 2019, Tavangarian sold the mansion for $75 million. He bought 1601 San Onofre Dr, in Pacific Palisades, for $7.3 million in 2013, then took on $27 million in construction loans from Boston Private and refinanced with a $52 million bridge loan from First Credit Bank. He initially put the home up as a “ride out the pandemic in style” luxury rental asking $350,000 per month, then sold the mansion in July for $83 million.
The Musk properties are unique in a number of ways, but Tavangarian believes the core elements of his previous projects will still apply. Musk sold the properties after announcing he had “decided to sell almost all physical possessions,” subsequently putting six Bel Air homes on the market within a week. The homes Tavangarian acquired include two traditional-style houses built in the 1960s, a former 10-bedroom colonial estate, and a white contemporary owned by Hollywood developer Hal Arnold before Musk bought it in 2013.
Tavangarian will now attempt to redevelop all four homes into a single project he’s calling “The One Bel Air.” He’s keeping the exact vision close to the vest, but says it will include an assortment of environmental, aesthetic, and wellness features to try to usher in a new era of luxury living in one of the most famous pockets of Los Angeles. He’s already secured $85 million in construction loans for the project from Hankey Capital, and his years-long friendship with Musk has seemingly only helped strengthen his resolve.
“I’m trying to change the notion of how people live,” he said.
Ardie Tavangarian's journey from Shiraz to Los Angeles illustrates a blend of determination, vision, and an ability to adapt and innovate within the luxury real estate market. His story is not just one of architectural brilliance but also of a unique and inspirational entrepreneurial spirit.
References:
The Real Deal
Photo by Kevin Scanlon