No Need to Panic—You Have a Safe Place

By JOHN HARLOW | Editor-in-Chief

When Jodie Foster first locked herself away from scary intruders in the 2002 David Fincher film “Panic Room,” many viewers dismissed the idea of an armored “safe place” in a suburban home as a Hollywood fantasy.

Instead, they have grown more sophisticated, expensive and glitzy.

They have crossed the line between an emergency bolthole, an idea that dates back at least to Elizabethan England “priest holes” and the more long-term ambitions of the nuclear survival shelters of the 1950s.

Michael Edlen, a Palisadian Realtor, said it’s still a novelty in the Palisades.

But as people grow both increasingly wealthy and anxious—strangely in tandem—the panic suite could become as much a selling fixture as the dry bar.

Partially it’s to take advantage of the previously relaxed basement rules: These are being tightened up by the city of Los Angeles, but finding a purpose for one, two or three subterranean stories has taxed the brightest mind.

In London, Russian oligarchs have been sinking safe rooms below 19th century homes. They are dubbed iceberg houses because most of the space is invisible, below the “water line.”

In Silicon Valley, Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Steve Jobs, excavated so deep under her mansion, planners had to draw up new rules regulating basements. Bill Gates has something similar, with hidden elevators from master bedrooms down to his BatCave.

So what are the choices for the well-heeled and anxious?

Gary Lynch, general manager at Texas-based Rising S Bunkers, said that demand in Los Angeles has risen more than 150 percent over the past two years.

He built a $10 million bunker for an Oscar-winning client in Napa Valley recently. (If you can call nearly 40 rooms with a bowling alley and shooting range a bunker.)

From the surface it looks like a mere mansion; underneath you can live out the zombie apocalypse with fitness rooms and natural light tubes to grow your own crops.

Nearby, Lynch helped design another mansion with four escape tunnels and a myriad of short-term safe rooms. The main safe room was designed as a barn.

His more modest best seller, for the more urbanely threatened, is 10 feet by 50 feet and comes with its own power and water supply and air-filtration system. That retails at $112,000.

There is room for fantasy, too.

Steve Humble of Creative Home Engineering said clients planning secret doors quote James Bond, Indiana Jones and “Goonies” as their inspiration.

“We are designing an indoor phone booth so that when the user dials the right number the back panel opens to a secure area,” he told Hollywood Reporter.

And the ultimate panic room?

One local billionaire, said one builder, wants a safe room that includes a rocket launch pad “so he can blast off and land safely a mile away. He is not paranoid—people really don’t like him.”