He’s hosted Kim and Kanye for Thanksgiving, regularly cruises with Justin Bieber on his party yacht, and owns two of the hottest clubs in Miami.
So it’s no surprise that last October, when nightlife impresario David Grutman proposed to his girlfriend of eight months — model Isabela Rangel — he went big.
The club king hired graffiti artist HG to paint a wall-size mural of her likeness in the hip Wynwood neighborhood. “I had security guards surrounding it so nobody would put anything on social media,” Grutman recalls. “We drove there and I got down on one knee and proposed to her in front of the mural.”
Painted next to the portrait was the big question, “Isabela will you marry me?,” and underneath were two boxes, labeled Yes and No.
“He handed me a can of spray paint — I had been asking him why it was in the car — and I sprayed an X in the Yes box,” says Rangel.
Soon after, the Brazilian-born beauty, 24, who was based in New York — where the two met at a party through mutual friends — moved full time into Grutman’s 6,400-square-foot, three-bedroom, 5½-bathroom Sunset Island manse.
“Isabela has made it more homey,” Grutman, 41, tells Alexa. “This used to be more of an entertainment house.”
That’s putting it mildly. Known for his outsize personality and penchant for strip clubs, Grutman regularly tossed celeb-packed bashes at his half-acre waterfront property, where an enormous pink Pleasure Emporium sign still lords over the backyard, a relic from a shuttered adult DVD and book store.
Last March, he hosted what was billed as the S – – t Show BBQ; the poolside bacchanal featured go-go dancers, live flamingos, scantily clad clowns, mariachi bands, a kiss-cam drone and boldface guests like Reggie Bush, Afrojack and David Guetta.
“That was the first and the last barbecue,” laughs Grutman, whose neighbors in the exclusive gated community were none too pleased. Another reason he’s toned down the excessive partying? His gorgeous fiancée.
“I’m leading a much healthier lifestyle with Isabela,” he says, taking a bite of the pan-seared fish fillet atop a bed of quinoa prepared by their at-home chef. “I work out twice a day now and my sugar intake is way down. Also, there are fewer naked girls around.”
Grutman bought the two-story Mediterranean-style home in 2013 for $5.15 million, then spent six months and $1 million on renovations. (“Today it’s worth around $12 million,” he says.) He enlisted landscape architect David Font to reimagine the yard, adding a circular seating area around the enormous trunk of a banyan tree.
For the interiors, François Frossard, who’s designed some of Miami’s top restaurants, was tapped to give the 1930s home a more open layout, knocking down a wall to create one large living area that flows seamlessly into a large den.
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The kitchen was also redone, outfitted with white cabinetry, white quartz counters and a large island surrounded by white leather stools.
Frossard shopped Miami’s Design District for neutral furnishings, in soft grays and off-whites with clean, simple lines — so as not to compete with Grutman’s colorful art collection, which is clearly the focus of much of his energy.
“Art really resonates with me,” says the Naples, Fla.-born Grutman.
The son of a real estate broker mother and banker father, he started his career as a Miami bartender before working his way to the top of the electronic dance music scene, eventually owning hot spots Story and LIV. “My first piece, a Warhol turtle print [which hangs in the kitchen], I bought for $40,000 from a gallery on Lincoln Road. Now I collect a lot of local street artists; I discover a lot of them on Instagram and start following them. I like being around creative types, and I enjoy developing a relationship with the artists I collect.”
And collect he does — every inch of wall space is occupied by paintings, sculptures or photographs by contemporary artists including Santlov, Peter Tunney, Kaws and Alex Yanes. “I’ve actually run out of room,” Grutman admits.
Among the most prominent: “The World in Your Hands,” a fireplace panel by multimedia artist Alex Turco that spans an entire wall in the living room (see cover), and a large, colorful portrait of Isabela by Cuban-born artist Anthony Hernandez, which hangs above a velvet sofa in the media lounge.
The biggest attention-grabber is an installation piece by Dante Dentoni. Imbedded in the wall and ceiling between the living room and kitchen are vignettes from Grutman’s life and things he loves: his friend Hulk Hogan, a stripper on a pole, the bathroom at LIV, N.W.A’s “Straight Outta Compton” album cover, Grutman’s VanDutch luxury boat (the SS Groot) — all rendered in Legos. “It took two months of planning and a week to install,” he notes. “Hulk loves it.”
The nightlife kingpin’s playful side is also on display in his toy room, a space off the media lounge crowded with hundreds of collectibles: Kidrobots, brightly colored animal figurines, a Day of the Dead mannequin, an old barber’s chair.
On the home’s second level are the bedrooms: two guest rooms — where Kim, Kanye and North spent Thanksgiving — and a spacious master suite with a seating area that overlooks the backyard. Rangel recently replaced the bedroom furniture with contemporary pieces from Kom, a store on Biscayne Boulevard; she also insisted that a photograph of a topless woman be taken down.
“I didn’t want to wake up every morning to someone else’s boobs,” she says. In its place hangs a black-and-white photograph of Audrey Hepburn by ’60s English photographer Terry O’Neill.
It joins several other O’Neill photos, including Grutman’s favorite, a portrait of Raquel Welch.
The couple’s walk-in closet is evenly split between his and hers; Grutman’s wardrobe consists primarily of black jeans paired with wrestling or vintage hip-hop T-shirts — there are stacks and stacks of them — and sneakers, of which he owns more than 200 pairs.
“Nike sends me new ones all the time,” he says.
Grutman’s uniform rarely varies when he tours his empire — which now includes Komodo, a Southeast Asian restaurant in the Brickell area he opened with Jeffrey Chodorow last November — always with Isabela on his arm.
“We go out every evening. It’s important to let people see your face,” Grutman notes.
But they’ll take a break from their nightly rounds this Saturday when the couple ties the knot in front of 500 guests at the street-art mecca Wynwood Walls.
Best man is fellow nightlife honcho Noah Tepperberg; performing the ceremony will be Pastor Rich Wilkerson Jr., who also married Kim and Kanye.
As for the future, Grutman envisions developing a whole lifestyle brand — “where you eat at my restaurant, party in my club and stay in my hotel” — and becoming a dad.
“A psychic told me we were going to have two boys in a year,” he says, grabbing Isabela’s hand. “In a year?” she cries, incredulously. “OK,” he concedes. “Maybe two years.”
