It didn’t take Gary Jabara and his wife, Lisa, long to start sharing their good fortune with a $1 million gift to Sage Hill School in Newport Beach. The private prep school on 30 acres in Newport Coast will use the money to renovate its athletic field, with new artificial turf and a new running track. Jabara recently agreed to sell 2,300 cell-phone towers owned by his Mobilitie LLC in a $1.1 billion deal with competitor SBA Communications Corp. The deal was struck in February, with an expected closing by the end of April. The gift to Sage Hill came on May 2. Local brokers take note: Jabara also said he’d be shopping for real estate investments once his windfall arrived …
Veteran healthcare industry exec and angel investor Dick Allen, who will become chairman of the New York-based Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation on July 1, got a reminder of the challenge involved just a few days after his appointment. It came courtesy of the following headline on the front-page of the Wall Street Journal: “No Easy Cure for Diabetic Children.” Allen no doubt already knew that—he and his wife are responsible for the Mary and Dick Allen Diabetes Center at Hoag Memorial …
The recent passings of First American Financial Chairman Emeritus Donald Kennedy and former All-Pro football player Rich Saul led to memorials that drew distinct crowds. Bill Podlich, Larry Higby and Jim Muzzy were among the contingent from the business community who honored Kennedy at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana. Local pols Loretta Sanchez and Miguel Pulido were on hand, and Jim Doti led a contingent from Chapman College. Athletic stars were in abundance at a memorial for Saul at Big Canyon CC after a service at Mariners Church, including former Rams teammates Rosey Greer, Jackie Slater and Vince Ferragamo. Frank “Sandy” Tatum, whose friendship with Kennedy goes back to their days on the Stanford’s national championship golf team in 1939, gave a talk about his pal, but his words seemed to sum up both men being remembered: “He was an impact player on the field of life” …
Only in OC: The Balboa Bay Club is set to host a cocktail fundraiser with a $2,500-minimum ticket for presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney on June 1. We’ll see what kind of crowd that draws in the wake of Fred Karger’s Laguna Beach Precinct Walk & Frisbee Giveaway, which apparently sought to tap into a couple of ethnic voting blocs last weekend, billing music from bag pipers and a Cinco de Mayo theme. Karger, best known as one of the leaders of the fight to save the Boom Boom Room, is on the ballot in the June primary …
The GOP race has included some shots at Anaheim-based luxury hybrid maker Fisker Automotive Inc. in Anaheim, which has seen most of a $529 million loan from the Department of Energy held up in a move that seems tied in part to a case of the political shakes over the Solyndra bankruptcy. The Insider hears that Fisker expects a decision on whether its gets the rest of the loan within two months—and has private investors lined up to make up the difference if the feds don’t come through.
