More From Hayde; St. Clair Buys Large Site in Aspen
COMMERCIAL
Laguna Niguel-based Providence Venture X has teamed with Los Angeles-based Dynamic Builder to purchase a 13-acre industrial parcel in Fullerton from ConAgra Grocery Products, snapping up the last piece of an 85-acre parcel that housed Hunt Wesson’s tomato processing plant until it was closed in 1996. The price was not disclosed.
The Providence-Dynamic Builder joint venture plans to develop nine industrial buildings at the site that will total roughly 230,000 square feet.
Completion of the buildings, which will be sold by Grubb & Ellis with a projected asking rate of $80 per foot, is scheduled for the first quarter.
RESIDENTIAL
Here are a few more choice comments from the normally media-shy Mike Hayde, the CEO of Western National Group who recently sat down for a company profile that ran last week.
Being a private company affords Western National advantages that public companies don’t have. Not only is the company free of public scrutiny and federal reporting requirements, its executives are freer to act, said Hayde.
“We have run the company, I think, substantially different than other companies” Hayde said. “We got out of all real estate development in 1979 and we were dead right. We got out again in 1988 and we were dead right. … We make our own decisions.”
On his abilities as a prognosticator of investment returns:
“What I’ve learned from running this company and running development and a construction group for almost 20 years (is) never have I made an accurate prediction.
“So maybe we ought to buy a property today that we’re satisfied with today and react to the market. We like to say we repurchase all of our real estate every year. We go out on property walks, everyone in this room is out on the property.”
St. Clair’s Big Buy in Aspen
Seems there isn’t enough land in Southern California to keep Steve St. Clair and his St. Clair Co. busy.
The Newport Beach-based development company recently agreed to purchase the 903-acre Braun Ranch in Woody Creek,near Aspen, Colo.,for $23 million in what is being described as the single largest non-commercial real estate sale in that city’s history. The previous record was a $19 million residential sale in 1997.
The St. Clair company teamed up with a local partner to form Woody Creek Ventures LLC. The plan is to develop the site with 10,000-square-foot homes.
