“Life’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon—and the marathon isn’t over,” Chapman U fundraising chief and President Jim Doti told the Insider in 2007 after real estate developer and alum Dale Fowler and his wife, Sarah Ann, gave $60 million to Gordon College in Massachusetts. No need to tell the Fowlers, who continued their own marathon for higher education last week with a $55 million gift for what will be called the Dale E. Fowler School of Law at Chapman. The 76-year-old namesake made a fortune in real estate, starting with an apartment complex he built in Huntington Beach while in his 20s and growing through a string of industrial deals, including some timely land investments in Ontario. His Fowler Properties Inc.’s Anaheim office is now run by son Jeffrey, another Chapman grad. …
They’re called LA Kiss, but the Arena Football League’s newest franchise never considered anywhere but Anaheim, thanks to Tim Ryan, chief executive of the Honda Center. The team—whose ownership includes rockers Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley of Kiss, band manager Doc McGee, and league vet Brett Bouchy—is signed for five years. “Tim made sure we didn’t look at any other options,” said Bouchy, a former owner of the Orlando Predators who plans to move to OC soon …
Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s well-publicized sales pitch to local businesses presented another sort of option to Glenn Stearns, who says the Lone Star state is now in the picture as his Santa Ana-based Stearns Lending Inc. continues to expand. Perry hosted Stearns at the governor’s mansion in Austin, and, “He said, ‘We’ll treat you right,’ rather than, ‘You owe us,’ ’’ according to Stearns, whose mortgage lender plans 50 hires in Texas and will consider hundreds more there. The company, which saw about $500 million in revenue last year and just completed a $250 million bond offering, employs about 800 here and recently signed new leases that included signs atop three of OC’s bigger offices. Stearns and his wife, Mindy, will be less visible here, now that they’ve made Jackson Hole, Wyo., their full-time residence, partly in response to California’s taxes. “Why work so hard to pay a state that’s not being fiscally responsible?” says Stearns …
The Ritz won’t be landing at the old Chanteclair spot near JWA, where current tenant Posch is expected to build its own brand for the foreseeable future. That doesn’t mean the airport area is off Ray Jacobi’s radar as the Ritz faces a February deadline on relocating from Newport Center and considers other changes a move might require. “It could be the Ritz Cafe and Grill in a smaller space,” Jacobi said …
Extron boss Andrew Edwards became a restaurateur with The Ranch in Anaheim, and in April he told our Kari Hamanaka that he’s a farmer, too, with 2 acres in Orange that produced a crop of 400 heirloom tomatoes last year. Is that worth bragging about for a guy with a $600-million-a-year electronics business? Check the take on tomatoes that another local restaurateur—Wahoo’s cofounder Wing Lam—gave Hamanaka for her story.
