Oculus VR co-founder Palmer Luckey has bought a marina in Huntington Beach.
The 24-year-old tech wunderkind recently completed the purchase of Huntington Harbor Bay Club, a roughly 13-acre waterfront site on Warner Avenue about half a mile from the ocean.
The property is one of the largest Orange County marinas north of Newport Beach. It includes an entertainment venue that’s under renovation, as well as boat slips that can hold a few hundred boats and yachts.
A two-building condominium property on Bay Club’s grounds wasn’t part of the transaction.
It’s the first Orange County investment—real estate or otherwise—that Luckey is known to have made since his virtual reality software and hardware firm was bought by Facebook Inc. for $2 billion.
The marina sold for about $34.5 million, according to property records. Forbes magazine estimates Luckey’s fortune at $730 million.
Oculus moved its headquarters from Irvine to Facebook’s offices in Menlo Park following the company’s sale in 2014. Luckey, who grew up in nearby Long Beach, stepped away from the company in March after facing criticism for his political activities during the last presidential election cycle, including funding a pro-Donald Trump online group.
Zeal Palace LP, one of the Long Beach-based entities that other news sources have said Luckey used to help fund Trump’s inauguration and related political activities, was also used to purchase the Huntington Beach property, real estate records show.
State records indicate Luckey is registered as president of Fiendlord’s Keep Inc., which runs Zeal Palace.
Both Zeal Palace and Fiendlord’s Keep refer to an old Super Nintendo video game that Luckey is reportedly fond of.
An LLC with ties to Mission Viejo-based Ranco Realty Group sold the marina, according to property records.
Cleanup Under Way
Signs posted at the marina last week noted new ownership. A handful of boat owners at Huntington Harbor Bay Club said that they had been told “the virtual reality guy” just bought their marina.
Ryan Prager, a partner with Irvine-based law firm Palmieri Tyler, confirmed that he represented Zeal Palace in the transaction, but declined to disclose the financial backers of the entity.
Prager, who works in the law firm’s corporate and real estate practice groups, said the new owners plan to “make it a first-class marina,” and will put forward the required funds to do so.
“It was bought as an investment,” Prager said. “It won’t be an eyesore; they’re going to clean it up.”
Last week, one of the seven docks at the property was being refurbished, and a variety of contractors were in talks with the site’s managers to make improvements to the area parking lot and landscaping.
The bulk of construction is taking place at the Huntington Bay Club, an entertainment center on the property’s western edge.
The venue’s capacity is about 200 people, according to its website.
Concurrently with the purchase of the marina site, Luckey sold the entertainment venue to an affiliate of Irvine-based 24 Carrots, a high-end catering and events company that works at some of Orange County’s most prominent wedding, corporate and other special event locations. He got about $13 million for it, CoStar Group Inc. records show, and is staying involved in the property. Zeal Palace lent 24 Carrots about $12.1 million to fund the purchase, property records show.
News of the marina purchase comes as Luckey, who helped kickstart the recent virtual reality technology surge with a prototype headset built in his parents’ garage, re-emerges in the public eye after leaving Oculus and parent company Facebook.
This month, he gave his first interview after leaving the firm he co-founded in 2012 as Oculus VR Inc.
In a talk with Japanese virtual reality online publication MoguraVR, Luckey, who was attending an anime convention at the time, said it “certainly was a great working environment (at Facebook). But I had to restrain myself working there.”
It’s unclear if he left Facebook voluntarily or otherwise.
Attempts to reach him last week for comment on the real estate transaction were unsuccessful.
