Irvine-based Pacific Hospitality Group LLC has added a new luxury resort in Santa Barbara to its portfolio.
Pacific Hospitality announced last week it bought the Bacara Resort & Spa, a 354-room hotel in the Santa Barbara County city of Goleta. The Bacara had been on the market for sale for a few months.
The resort—known for catering to celebrity guests and those willing to pay as much as $10,000 a night for some of the property’s largest suites—was sold by an affiliate of Redwood City-based Ohana Real Estate Investors LLC.
Ohana bought the property in mid-2011 for a reported $105 million, well below the $222 million it reportedly cost to develop the resort in 2000.
Privately held Pacific Hospitality, led by Chief Executive Tim Busch, didn’t disclose the price of its latest buy; Ohana is said to have received offers of at least $140 million for the Bacara, according to local reports.
Pacific Hospitality’s last big purchase came in Orange County last year, when it partnered with Richard Pickup’s Irvine-based private equity company Eagle Four Partners to buy The Balboa Bay Club & Resort in Newport Beach and Newport Beach Country Club on undisclosed terms.
The waterfront Balboa Bay property has since been renamed to distinguish its two main parts, with the private portion now known as the Balboa Bay Club, and the rest of the property’s operations known as the Balboa Bay Resort and open to the general public.
Eagle Four also is an investor in the Bacara deal, along with Bill Foley, the former chief executive of then Anaheim-based Carl’s Jr. and title insurer Fidelity National Financial. Foley owns vineyards in Santa Barbara.
Ohana Real Estate’s remaining portfolio includes six properties, with three in OC, including the Montage Laguna Beach, Travelodge Laguna Beach and Aliso Creek Inn & Golf Course.
The Aliso Creek Inn was put on the market for sale last year. Mark Christy, co-owner of San Juan Capistrano-based Hobie Sports, has been mentioned as a potential buyer.
Ohana’s two other OC properties aren’t believed to be up for sale.
Ohana is indirectly owned by eBay Inc. founder Pierre Omidyar, whose net worth is estimated at more than $8 billion by Forbes.
Going Taller
The new owner of a pair of commercial buildings slated for residential redevelopment along Main Street in Irvine is looking to make the project a little taller.
Metropolis Gardens LLC recently submitted plans with the city of Irvine to modify previously approved development plans for Metropolis, a proposed 457-unit, multibuilding apartment complex at Main Street and Cartwright Road.
The two buildings that would make way for the development include the former headquarters of Quantum Fuel Systems Technologies Worldwide Inc., which last year moved its base to Lake Forest.
Metropolis Gardens, which is affiliated with San Diego-based apartment owner Garden Communities, bought the two older buildings last October for undisclosed terms from Sares Regis Group in Irvine.
The buildings, which total about 129,000 square feet and are on 7.4 acres of land, would be razed to make way for a nearly 390,000-square-foot apartment complex.
Original plans called for the buildings at Metropolis to run four stories, but the new owner now wants one of the buildings to have five floors, and another to be seven stories. The extra floors are needed to make the individual units at the complex larger on a square-footage basis, according to the developer.
The project is envisioned as a rental project, but it could be converted to for-sale housing in the future, according to city filings.
San Diego Sale
Anaheim-based Marketplace Properties, a developer of shopping centers, has sold a property in San Diego County for a little more than $12.4 million.
San Diego-based Retail Opportunity Investments Corp. said it bought Bernardo Heights Plaza, a Sprouts-anchored shopping center in the masterplanned community of Rancho Bernardo.
The nearly 38,000-square-foot center, which is fully occupied, traded hands for about $330 per square foot.
The center was built in 1983 and remodeled in 2006, according to brokers with Irvine-based Hanley Investment Group Real Estate Advisors who represented the buyer and seller.
Other centers in Southern California that are run by Marketplace Properties include locations in Rancho Cucamonga, San Marcos and Tujunga.
