Ken Lay’s Lonely Castle in the Sky Floats Down Almost 20 Percent

“How much further will it fall?” Swamplot asked back in January, not long after the list price for Ken and Linda Lay’s 33rd-floor penthouse in the Huntingdon on Kirby Dr. was marked down the last time. And now we have a partial answer: All the way to $10.25 million — for now, at least. That’s almost a 14 percent cut from the last price, but just under 20 percent off the initial $12.8 million ya-gotta-try pricing Linda Lay started with.

And really, you want to be coming down in regular increments. What numbers come next?

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How about these: 12,827 sq. ft., 4 bedrooms, 4 full and 5 half-baths, 10 parking spaces, 6 elevators, and a pesky little $10,182 monthly maintenance fee.

A spokesperson for Linda Lay told the Chronicle last September that the full-floor condo was the only property she still owned. Ken Lay’s sudden death in 2006 — after he and Jeff Skilling were convicted of 10 counts of securities fraud and related charges, but before he could be sentenced — may have interfered with the efforts of prosecutors to force the Lays to sell the condo and use the proceeds to pay off Enron creditors. But the Justice Department won’t share details about the case, and court records are sealed.

9 Comment

  • Ken Lay and Elvis are hanging out somewhere in Thailand.

  • @CB: You are dead on!…pardon the pun. I have maintained that Lay’s untimely death was just a bit too convenient. And something tells me he had plenty of ill-gained Enron bucks left to rearrange his face. I’m sure Linda visits often…..dare I say to get Lay’d?

  • She’d do better to move out and tear out and leave the shell. It’s sooooooooo tacky.

  • Why tear down the shell of the Huntington Lay condo? At least its not tacky like the Witness Protection house on Memorial decorated with white wash furniture.

  • Where’s the turret?

  • At least its not tacky like the Witness Protection house on Memorial decorated with white wash furniture.
    ___________________________

    Please. Mr. Mafia had better taste in tacky…

  • It is not the Penthouse… Charles Hurwitz and Bob Lanier shared the penthouse on the 34th floor.. Kenny boy was on the 33rd floor

  • Some define penthouse as a full floor on an upper floor. Others as any of the units on the top floor. For all intents and purposes the Lay’s apartment was a penthouse. The “PH” for a long time was a status symbol in buildings. But a lot of the pre-wars in New York simply used the floor number. Houston sort of falls short compared to Manhattan particularly with the duplex and triplex units although I’m not sure there are any triplex units. And of course those muddle the concept of penthouse since two or three units may occupy the top two or three floors.

    I am just amazed that anyone with the money the Lays had at their disposal couldn’t have gotten a decorator to at least make the Tuscan look a little more elegant. Most of the rooms look like they are in Royal Oaks. Not The Hungtingdon.

    The Lay’s apartment certainly falls short compared to Manhattan and its “moguls” who either tend to go very modern or very traditional. And spectacularly so.

    If they’d done this in one of the better co-ops, the board probably would have sued and evicted them. And then charged for the tear-out.

    Linda said they lost everything. One thing they obviously didn’ lose was taste. They never had any.

    Not sure what happened with Jeff Skilling’s Meditteranean palazzo he tore down the Blaffer house to build but no doubt the interior was more Tuscan than Mediterranean.

    And of course the Fastows and their “Craftsman” mansion on Del Monte. Looks like the rest of them. Just much bigger. Somehow “Craftsman” just doesn’t belong in elegant neighborhoods. But then neither do some of the people who build them. And the same probably can be said of “Tuscan” mansions. Particularly the ones in the sky.

  • The home is one of the best in all of the world. If I could buy it I would today. The karma, and the powerful, influential, compelling view, makes the statement of hard work, and great people. The true Dr.Ken Lay was one of the best blessing to all of man kind ever.

    We all miss you.

    Renard D. Euell CEO
    Euell Energy, Founded 1970
    http://www.euellenergy.om