You could be forgiven thinking the Dec. 18 holiday party held at the new Lido Isle home of hotel developer and owner Bob Olson, held on the first night of the Newport Beach Christmas Boat Parade, was to celebrate members of the Business Journal’s annual OC500 listing, given the volume of notable business and community leaders in attendance.
Neighbors stopping by to see the new waterfront home of the R.D. Olson founder, built on a double lot, included Anduril Industries’ Palmer Luckey and City Ventures co-founder Craig Atkins.
Also in attendance: Allied Universal CEO and chairman Steve Jones, MSP Sports Capital CEO Jeff Moorad, OC Museum of Art CEO Heidi Zuckerman, Augie’s Quest chair Lynne Nieto, Johnson Capital founder Guy Johnson, Mars Inc.’s Alan Airth, restaurateur Ron Salisbury, developers Brandy Birtcher, Ed Roski and Scott Burnham, the latter of whom is a partner with Olson for the ongoing redevelopment of the Dana Point Harbor, and the Business Journal’s Richard Reisman.
Security giant exec Steve Jones, tech wunderkind Palmer Luckey and Bob Olson have each been named as our Business Person of the Year in recent years. See next week’s print edition for the latest collection of winners.
2024 ended on a bang for hotel sales in OC: see Parimal Rohit’s front-page story for more on the $303M deal for a pair of properties near Disneyland in Anaheim, marking the largest hotel deal in the state last year, according to industry data.
On the other end of OC, a pair of smaller properties across the street from the San Clemente pier, the Seahorse Resort and the Villa Del Mar Inn, traded last month for $15.5M, per CoStar records.
The new owner, property records indicate, is affiliated with celebrity Los Angeles criminal defense lawyer Mark Geragos, who has represented Hunter Biden, Michael Jackson, Mike Tyson and Colin Kaepernick, among others.
Outside the courtroom, Geragos has invested heavily in commercial properties, according to reports. While most of his deals are in LA, he was reported last year to have also bought a boutique hotel in New Orleans.
East Coast Postcard: Step outside the Four Seasons hotel in the Georgetown area of Washington, D.C., and one of the first stores you’ll see along Pennsylvania Avenue is a Lugano gallery, one of the newer spots for the luxe jeweler from Newport Beach.
Lugano’s built a local connection through its ties to area museums, such as providing free admission to the OC Museum of Art. A similar strategy was seen during recent trips to D.C.: last year saw Lugano supporting a new Mark Rothko exhibit at the National Gallery of Art.
This year a trip to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum saw Lugano founders Idit and Moti Ferder listed among the main contributors for the Beyond Our Walls Fund, a $30M+ effort established in 2023 for “ensuring the relevance of the Holocaust for new generations.”
