By Darrell Hofheinz, Palm Beach Daily News
The homeowners who carried out a two-year, down-to-the-studs renovation of a 1980s-era house on Wells Road have sold it for a recorded $17.85 million on the near North End of Palm Beach.
The sellers of 110 Wells Road were investment banker and attorney Rick Knop and his ex-wife, Leslee Helene Belluchie, who spent much of her career working with U.S. defense and intelligence agencies. The deed was recorded June 24.
They had bought the house for a recorded $6.79 million in 2018, when they were still married, from a company controlled by Max Weinberg, a real estate investor and the drummer for Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band. Weinberg also was late-night television host Conan O’Brien’s sidekick on talk shows in he 1990s and 2000s.
A trust named after the property’s address was on the buyer’s side of the just-closed sale, with Palm Beach attorney Guy Rabideau serving as trustee. Because of privacy rules governing trusts, no other information about the buyer was immediately available in public records.
Built in 1986, the Mediterranean-style house has 6,723 square feet of living space, inside and out, and stands on a lot measuring a little more than a third of an acre in the ocean block of Wells Road. The property is a half mile north of The Breakers’ golf course.
The five-bedroom house had been on the market since May 2024, when it was first listed at $28.5 million. It had undergone several price reductions before settling at $21.5 million in January, and sold in a deal that closed June 18, the multiple listing service shows.
Knop is an attorney whose professional resume includes working in the Washington, D.C., area as an investment banker and an investor in the government/defense industry. Belluchie is an engineer by training.
The deed lists Belluchie with an address in Sarasota and her ex-husband with one in Edgewater, Maryland.
Paulette Koch and Dana Koch held the listing for the house on Wells Road. They know the property well, having once listed it for sale for Weinberg.
Broker Christian Angle of Christian Angle Real Estate acted on behalf of the buyer in the most recent transaction. Angle also had handled both sides of the 2018 sale when Knop and Belluchie bought the property from Weinberg’s company.
Knop was already familiar with the residence before the 2018 purchase, he told the Palm Beach Daily News in a 2024 article about the house.
“Between the ocean and the lake, I had walked by this house many times with my dogs, and I think the location is spectacular,” Knop said in 2024. “Wells Road is one of the most beautiful streets in Palm Beach, and this property is one house off the ocean with a gate to the beach right out the front door.”
The sellers’ renovation resulted in interiors with detailed moldings, beamed ceilings, wrought-iron embellishments and floors covered in stone and hardwood.
Work crews extended the width of the foyer, where a picture window was added to frame a view of the L-shaped loggia. The rooms overlooking the pool and spa have French doors that lead into the poolside loggia, while the cabana room opens to a terrace.
Crews also opened up the entrance from the family room into the living room.
The living room is topped with a pitched ceiling, set off by stenciled beams. In addition to the French doors accessing the loggia, another set of doors opens to a garden terrace.