Change is being served at Palisades Tennis Club, the 16-court club next to the Hyatt Regency Newport Beach along Jamboree Road.
Originally known as John Wayne Tennis Club, and around for some 45 years, the club recently got a new owner: Laguna Beach’s Eric Davidson, co-founder of former Newport Beach senior homecare operator Vintage Senior Living.
Terms of the Palisades sale were undisclosed. Davidson also serves as chairman of Carlsbad’s World TeamTennis, and is owner of that league’s Orange County Breakers tennis team.
He takes over from Ken Stuart, who had owned the club—where the Breakers currently play their home matches—since 1995.
“Our plans are to ensure that Palisades continues to be a world-class club,” said Davidson, who noted that the club just struck a lease extension with the owners of the Hyatt for land that covers six of the club’s existing courts.
The other portion of the club’s land is subject to a ground lease held by Newport Beach developer Russ Fluter. An extension to that lease wasn’t made, and at the end of last month that part of the club—including the main clubhouse and Breakers Stadium, where the WTT team plays—was scheduled to close.
A new location for the Breakers is expected to be announced in mid-March. The club said it will operate out of a modular building for the time being.
Fluter said he’s planning to re-lease the 2.8-acre site he owns next to the Back Bay, and “maintain it for recreational use.”
Palisades’ best-known member in recent years was Kobe Bryant, who club representatives called an “avid tennis player and fan.”
“He took lessons regularly from one of our pros, Billy McQuaid,” reps said, noting that Palisades was referred to at last week’s celebration of Bryant’s life by his business manager.
March 9 sees the start of the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, where Irvine device maker Masimo once again is a main sponsor of the unofficial fifth major for professional tennis. You’ll likely see CEO Joe Kiani there, as well as at the eighth annual World Patient Safety, Science & Technology Summit, kicking off March 5 in Huntington Beach. Former President Bill Clinton will be a keynote speaker.
For more on Kiani and Masimo, keep an eye on the March 9 print edition of the Business Journal.
A prototype Nintendo PlayStation from 1992 is up for auction through March 5th, and the gaming console currently counts a high bid of $300,000 … from Anduril Industries’ Palmer Luckey.
“I have the largest game console collection, and I am on a quest to digitize and preserve the history of physical video games,” the founder of Oculus VR said via Twitter, explaining the bid.
“Perfect VR will ensure the original experience lives on forever, but we need to keep these things alive and functional” in the meantime, he said.
He also said he couldn’t figure out who he was bidding against. The PlayStation “is very, very cool, but I can only think of a handful of other people who think it is $300K worth of cool.”
