It looks as though OneWest Bank did just fine on one piece of John McMonigle’s would-be real estate empire—the tony Newport Center HQ he built in 2008 for his residential brokerage. The bank recently sold the lavish, 8,000-square-foot office. CBRE Group Inc. marketed the property for about $8 million, nearly $2 million more than the loan OneWest held when it foreclosed last October. Informed sources say OneWest—which took on the loan when it bought the assets of failed La Jolla Bank from the FDIC in 2009—got its price or close to it from a buyer who remained undisclosed at last check. Next up for OneWest: an auction later this month for the unfinished, 12.5-acre Villa del Lago estate that McMonigle once billed as a $57 million charmer …
The Big Orange: a recent Wall Street Journal report on apartment rents put OC in the company of the Big Apple. Both markets were cited as countering a national trend that’s seen low home prices push more renters into the market as buyers, helping to cool down a recent string of rent hikes. Home prices in OC and N.Y. are running ahead of most of the nation, and “renting is still cheaper” for would-be entrants to the home-buying market …
The Insider hears that Anaheim-based Fisker Automotive was sharp like OneWest when it bought its Delaware manufacturing plant from GM. Fisker picked it up for about $18 million, and found the place equipped with machinery that didn’t match its plans. Well-placed sources say Fisker sold the machinery for more than it paid for the entire plant. Keep that in mind as Fisker rattles its saber about skipping production of its high-end hybrids in Delaware, which could be heard in the wake of the Department of Energy’s hold-up of $336 million in green-tech funding under the Obama administration’s bid to boost jobs in the U.S. The hiccup on the loan from the feds comes after Fisker was tardy to market with its first model, the $100,000 Karma, which has since run into quality problems on its battery …
Donnie Crevier stepped back from the car business when he sold his dealerships to Penske Automotive Group last year. He recently stepped up his already-prolific efforts on philanthropy with an appointment to the board of Santa Ana-based Think Together, which provides academically oriented after-school programs to kids in need …
Also joining the Think Together board last week was Steve Bilt, president and CEO of Irvine-based Smile Brands, which provides business services for dentists. Bilt is a past winner of an Excellence in Entrepreneurship Award from the OCBJ and recently gave our readers a report on efforts he and his company made to provide dental care to the needy during a mission to Paraguay …
Kudos to the team of manufacturing technology students from Orange Coast College, which won first place in the Two-Year Colleges division with its “impact toughness test machine” at the Society of Manufacturing Engineers’ annual Westec convention in L.A. last month. Much talk at Westec about the shortage of qualified workers for manufacturing, a trend that’s hit OC companies despite an unemployment rate that remains relatively high at 8% here.
