Bellwether Financial Group’s naming of Irvine Co. veteran Ralph Grippo as a principal provides a signal on the future direction of the company’s coastal projects, including a $338 million renovation of Dana Point Harbor.
Bellwether, a Newport Beach-based investment and operations firm founded 21 years ago by Joe Ueberroth, son of Peter Ueberroth, has been decidedly under the sonar prior to this year.
While its Bellingham Marine unit is known for rebuilding docks, the company also invests in areas of technology, logistics, manufacturing and agriculture.
Ueberroth said his company has a different approach.
“We’re operators and we hold for the long term,” he told the Business Journal last week at the company’s 610 Newport Center Drive digs. Of the company’s current investments, “most are 10 years or more and some are passive but not much.”
Dig Big
Bellwether is getting more press this year: it’s part of a triumvirate that will redo the historic and somewhat sleepy South County harbor.
Last year, Dana Point Harbor Partners LLC won the deal to run the county-owned property, signing a 66-year lease in October.
Bellwether plans to rebuild a 2,300-slip marina, Burnham Ward Properties will handle the retail, and R.D. Olson Development will craft two new hotels.
All three are based in Newport Beach, and are equal partners in each part, Ueberroth said.
The full renovation will take the first six to seven years of the lease and is currently scheduled to be completed around 2025.
Drawings of the overall package include changes to some dock orientation, a reduction in marina gates from 16 to three, a pedestrian-based retail and restaurant layout, hotel rooms with harbor views and quiet places for those who want to escape crowds.
Ueberroth said the idea is an “experiential” use of the harbor, where different groups can find what they’re looking for along “a revitalized waterfront … from Doheny to Killer Dana.”
Water Everywhere
“The water, no pun intended, is the anchor,” Grippo said. “The magic” Ueberroth added, is integrating it with the land.
Grippo has experience in that type of magic.
He was president for 11 years at Irvine Co.’s resorts division, which includes the Resort at Pelican Hill, Fashion Island Hotel, Hotel Irvine, three golf courses, and a half-dozen marinas with 600 boat slips, mostly in OC.
Grippo’s salt-and-pepper hair bespeaks experience and a certain debonair air. During a recent interview, he skipped wearing a tie for perhaps the first time in a dozen years—because who in the heck wears a tie on a boat?
He joins a team that includes Joseph McCarthy, who is vice president of corporate development and general counsel, and Brian Schaefgen, who is chief financial officer.
Both executives, who started at Bellwether earlier this year, have previously worked with Ueberroth and have extensive contacts in OC.
McCarthy helped start Lake Forest-based iPourIt Inc.—Ueberroth holds a small stake in the maker of a software and taps system to dispense beer and wine via radio-frequency identification. McCarthy was recently general counsel to a cannabis-focused company.
Schaefgen, who was in finance at the Irvine Co. in the 1990s, spent recent years as the chief financial officer of Gary Jabara’s Newport Beach-based telecom infrastructure firm Mobilitie LLC, and at sports and entertainment venue telecom provider 5 Bars, formerly in Irvine.
Renovating Marinas
Bellwether’s offices are bathed in ocean blue, or how everyone wants a harbor to look. A glossy, 184-page book on Bellingham Marine’s work is titled “Building on Water.”
Ueberroth’s promoting the company’s unique vision that combines marine services with hospitality, finance, and real estate development.
Makes sense then for Bellwether’s office on Newport Center Drive next to Fashion Island, between the headquarters of companies like Irvine Co. and Pacific Investment Management Co.
It’s not just Dana Point Harbor that Ueberroth has his eye on. He sees opportunities in renovating large aging marinas of roughly 500 boats slips or more around the country.
“Waterfront communities want this,” he said.
Dana Point can be a model, replicated for other cities and counties through similar public-private partnerships, he said.
Aging marinas on U.S. coasts can be remade and integrated with retail, restaurants and hotels. Marinas can be “hospitality centers” and the basis for an experience.
“Docks are not a parking lot for boats.”
