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Tuesday, Mar 19, 2024
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Newport Center Comp: $10M Per Acre; Bill & Wayne; Will on Moreno

Word from a lender backing Mike Lutton, Tod Ridgeway and Ron Soderling in their buy of the old Beacon Bay car wash offers a benchmark of $10 million per acre for land in Newport Center. The trio that’s operating as Newport Center Anacapa Associates—named for the intersection where they hope to build a boutique hotel in place of the car wash—paid “approximately” $12.5 million for the 1.25-acre parcel, according to L.A.-based Karlin Real Estate, which put out word that it loaned them $7 million … Wayne Gross of Greenberg Gross likes the double-G logo his law firm has adopted—he says it helps deliver the message that his team works “hand in hand with our clients.” Reporter Jane Yu has a double-G of her own in this issue—make that a double-Gross. She shows impressive range with her Style File featuring Counselor Gross on page 67. That follows her front-page piece warning the world to think again before writing off that other Gross, aka the Bond King over at Pimco … Anyone else notice a parallel between the Angel Stadium lease Arte Moreno is seeking from the city of Anaheim and the split-off of parking lots that was the icing on the cake in former Dodgers owner Frank McCourt’s $2.3 billion sale of the team and stadium a couple of years ago? McCourt retains a half interest in the parking lots around the L.A. ballyard and collects about $7 million in annual rent from the team’s new owner. Moreno wants a 66-year lease at $1 a year on 155 acres of parking lots he’s eyeing for commercial development, with a promise to use profits to pay for $150 million or so in upgrades to the stadium … There was a definite baseball flavor and clear vote of confidence for Moreno at the Orange County Business Council’s annual dinner at the Hotel Irvine last week. Pulitzer Prize winner and bona fide baseball aficionado George Will gave the keynote after an introduction by Angels Chairman Dennis Kuhl, whose boss was in the crowd. Will peppered his speech—a cautionary discourse on what he characterized as America’s slide toward a welfare state—with baseball anecdotes. And he spent some time before his talk with the only guy in these parts who can match Will on his Pulitzer Prize and devotion to baseball: the Business Journal’s own Rick Reiff. Will told Reiff that “baseball is back in Southern California” and that Angels fans couldn’t have “a better, more fan-friendly owner” than Moreno. Look for more of Will’s views on California in an upcoming edition of Reiff’s SoCal Insider show on PBS SoCal … Local tie: East Coaster Will was accompanied to the event by his sister, Katherine Jorgensen, a resident of Newport Beach … Kudos: to Sapphire Laguna chef and owner Azmin Ghahreman, who will provide healthy snacks for the March 1 Loom Against Cancer event in Tustin, where volunteers will attempt to create the world’s longest chain of the sort of colored rubber bands known as looms. It’s all to benefit CHOC as part of the MaxLove Project—and fulfill a birthday wish for Max “SuperMax” Wilford, who’s almost 7 and is battling brain cancer … Worth a look: the small, colorful garden in front of Dupont Center at Dupont & Von Karman.

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