Winston Chung undertook a one-man campaign to boost sagging perceptions of the local real estate market in 2011.
The Chinese electric-battery magnate and philanthropist with the quirky biography raised eyebrows when he swooped into OC with plans to buy the Balboa Bay Club and Resort and the Newport Beach Country Club—both prominent gathering places for the rich and famous here.
Chung’s buying spree remains a work in progress.
The deal for the tony resort and country club came with much fanfare in August but has yet to close. Word that he’s in for a Newport Harbor mansion once valued at nearly $35 million also remains just that.
Then there’s Chung’s search for land to building a battery factory somewhere in Southern California, announced in October—again with much fanfare and also unsettled at this point.
Chung has made good on a number of other deals, buying stakes in several local companies with the potential to tie into his electric battery operations. He’s also been a benefactor, giving $10 million to the engineering school at the University of California, Riverside.
Add up the done deals and the headlines he’s grabbed for others that remain pending and Chung stirred the market just as a summer torpor threatened to become a double dip.
And he did it like an unabashed OC booster.
“[Newport Beach] is a really good place to reside, very clean and very comfortable,” Chung told the Business Journal in October, through a translator. “Little by little, [I’ll] become a resident of the city.”
Reliable sources say Chung has already put more than $70 million into Southern California companies, including at least two in OC, to go with his gift to UCR.
His pending investments are another matter.
China Challenge
Sources close to the Balboa Bay Club deal say he’s having trouble getting money out of China—a common refrain these days. And while other news outlets have routinely described Chung as a billionaire since he first showed up in these parts, getting a full grasp of his wealth has proved tricky.
Still, Chung appears to be the wealthiest person not named Albert Pujols to announce a move to OC over the past year, based on deals that have gone through. And while real estate investments may have grabbed the most headlines in Chung’s 2011 Southern California shopping spree, his larger mark might be made with job creation.
His plan to build an electric battery factory somewhere in Southern California and hire 2,600 workers would be a big boost to the region’s electric vehicle industry. California as a whole employed an estimated 1,800 people in the electric-vehicle industry in 2010.
Locally, the largest electric vehicle employer is Anaheim-based hybrid carmaker Fisker Automotive Inc., which employs about 600.
Other non-real estate deals Chung signed here include a $24 million investment in Fountain Valley-based Gaffoglio Family Metalcrafters Inc., which makes prototypes and designs for large automakers.
Chung has put $28 million into Krystal Koach Inc. in Brea, one of the country’s largest limousine makers, and several related businesses.
Krystal Koach is expected to develop new, green vehicles—presumably using Chung’s batteries—including luxury shuttle buses, funeral cars and security vehicles in addition to limos.
“Here (in Southern California) we have a lot of talent pool, good labor, good invention and good creativity,” Chung said in October, through a translator.
From a real estate perspective, Chung was perhaps the most public face of a growing trend that took force in 2011: foreign buyers, particularly Chinese-based investors, acquiring OC assets.
A number of local offices got snapped up by Chinese investors last year, with the priciest being a $56.5 million buy of a building in the Irvine Spectrum that holds the headquarters of restaurant chain Yard House USA Inc.
Great Far East Inc.—a commercial real estate buyer with funding from Chinese investors—bought the nine-story building in July, a few months after it bought a smaller office near John Wayne Airport that traded hands for $11.8 million.
Not all the reports on Chung over the past year have been flattering. He’s said to be embroiled in litigation in Hong Kong, where he previously served as president of Thunder Sky Energy Group Ltd., a maker of batteries for electric bikes, motorcycles and automobiles.
With the Balboa Bay Club and Newport Beach Country Club deals yet to close, several sources wonder whether will be able to get money out of China to finalize the deals.
A closing on those sales is now expected early this year, according to other sources.
