The apartment market looks strong even as the condo market cools. Which makes The Irvine Company chief Donald Bren,who conspicuously sat out the recent high-rise condo mania,look brilliant (again). Some industry observers suggest that cash-rich Bren has avoided high-rise condos for tax reasons: He’d rather invest in income-generating apartments than take a capital gains hit on condo sales. Company insiders brush aside that notion, noting TIC includes condos in all of its planned communities,just not the high-rise variety, which Bren sees as “risky” and a poor fit with the “suburban” character of the ranch …
The last meals have been served and the lockers have been cleared out, making way for demolition and replacement of Big Canyon’s aging clubhouse. Members are being assessed $44,000 each for the roughly $50 million project, and they’ll use makeshift facilities for about two years. But the golf course remains open and a new practice facility with a lengthened driving range opens soon. The Insider hears a membership just sold for $211,000; add in the assessment, and old BC isn’t far behind new Shady Canyon, where memberships are priced at $275,000 …
Corporate lawyer Cary Hyden in Latham & Watkins’ Costa Mesa office is the brother-in-law of Charlie Crist, Florida’s Republican AG and heavy favorite in the November election to succeed Jeb Bush as governor …
The New Yorker critic John Updike has faulted it, but most reviewers have lauded “Wizard of the Crow,” a 784-page, lyrical political satire by UC Irvine Prof Ngugi wa Thiong’o. Time magazine called the exiled Kenyan writer “Africa’s Wizard of Words” …
OC license plate: PMSx6 (plate holder says “Wife and 5 Daughters”) …
The rest of this column owes to the relentlessness of Chapman U publicist Mary Platt …
Chapman’s young law school has achieved a No. 1 ranking,from Social Sciences Research Network for the number of scholarly articles posted in the past year. The rest of the Top 10? Just Harvard, NYU, Minnesota, UCLA, Yale, Duke, Chicago, Illinois and George Washington …
Hollywood legend Debbie Reynolds is being honored Nov. 4 at the 25th anniversary edition of Chapman’s American Celebration. Call (714) 744-7958 …
They had a packed crowd and a Panther win for the first football game at Chapman’s Holly and David Wilson Field/Ernie Chapman Stadium/Erin J. Lastinger Athletics Complex. (The naming rights are endless) …
Chapman Prof Marv Meyer’s “The Gospel of Judas” book tour included stops in Tokyo, Paris, Brussels and Bogota. The university’s Wind Symphony got a standing “O” in the Sydney Opera House. Three major summits down, four to go for Prez Jim Doti. He and son Adam scaled Mt. Elbrus in Russia,on the same day four Ukrainian climbers died on the mountain. And Platt? She was part of Westminster’s Nicholson Pipes and Drums that competed in the world bagpipe championship in Glasgow.
