Al Baldwin and George Argyros share much in common. For roughly 60 years, Baldwin and later his sons through their Newport Beach-based Baldwin & Sons, and Argyros, through his investment firm, Arnel & Affiliates, have been among the most prodigious Southern California real-estate developers. The Baldwins have primarily been homebuilders and developers of master-planned communities, Argyros a Midas-touch investor, including owning and managing apartment complexes and retail centers.
Now the Baldwin and Argyros families share a philanthropic passion: preservation of our national parks. Baldwin is the first-ever chairman of the $500 million Centennial Campaign for America’s National Parks. Argyros and Julia, his wife of 56 years and president of the Argyros Family Foundation, just donated $500,000 for a very personal aspect of the parks’ preservation: endangered native fish.
Julia is an avid fly fisher, running a fly-fishing school for women in Sun Valley, Idaho.
“Because of my passion for fishing, I understand the importance of native species and how we can all help with their preservation,” she said in announcing the grant at a ceremony in Washington state.
The grant will be directed toward saving the cutthroat trout at Yellowstone National Park. The cutthroat population is down 90% from a peak of 4 million in the 1980s, preyed upon by nonnative lake trout introduced into Yellowstone waters, according to Yellowstone and the parks foundation.
Julia and Baldwin took the occasion to reaffirm their belief that bold undertakings like restoring aquatic systems can’t succeed without foundation, corporate, and most significantly, private funding.
“Private philanthropy moves this much-needed preservation project forward,” Baldwin said.
Argyros philanthropy is most renowned for being cause-agnostic and outsize, even for one of the county’s wealthiest families. Again this year, the foundation was atop a Business Journal ranking of local giving by private foundations at $16.1 million—CHOC Children’s Hospital, Orange County School of the Arts, a $2.5 million STEM education center for Girl Scouts of Orange County, and the $15 million Julianne and George Argyros Plaza at Segerstrom Center being only a few of the recent beneficiaries.
It’s a long list that now includes Yellowstone-native cutthroat trout.
