GARY JABARA
FOUNDER
BOARDWALK INVESTMENTS GROUP
FOUNDER
IOXT ALLIANCE
THE GOOD LIFE: Judging from the glossy Napa Valley Life magazine, Gary Jabara’s The Estate Yountville is the place to see and be seen in wine country. The cover story of the Fall 2023 edition features luscious photos and an article that sweeps in readers with these words: “As if straight from the pages of a fairy tale, The Estate Yountville exudes an air of enchantment that can be compared to the beloved story ‘The Secret Garden.’”
It’s a major switch for the restless Jabara. Three years ago, he was the largest private owner of wireless infrastructure in the U.S. While still heavily involved in the tech sector, Jabara can now also be identified as a real estate mogul. Since 2020, he’s spent more than $600M on a series of notable commercial real estate acquisitions in the state.
THE REAL ESTATE: The crown jewel in Jabara’s high-end commercial real estate, which he runs under the Costa Mesa-based Boardwalk Investments Group Inc., is The Estate Yountville, a 22-acre “village-within-a-village” collection of upscale hotels, restaurants, wedding facilities, shops, meeting space, a vineyard and other facilities.
The Estate is the largest commercial property in the city of Yountville, which is just off the Saint Helena Highway, about 55 miles north of San Francisco. “It’s the gem of Napa Valley,” Jabara said at the time of the purchase, a deal that approached $300M. The property is undergoing a major renovation. SoCal has seen another $270M of buys in San Diego that includes a recently built high-end apartment tower in the city’s downtown and a prominent shopping center in Del Mar called Flower Hill Promenade.
The latter property is “the greatest shopping center in all of San Diego,” Jabara said.
THE 2021 SALE: The all-cash deals come after Jabara sold Newport Beach’s Mobilitie, the telecommunications infrastructure company he founded and chaired, in a deal news reports pegged around $1.7B. The company has now been rebranded as Boldyn Networks.
THE 2023 SALE: In 2013, Jabara was the primary financial backer to launch Villa Real Estate LLC, a Newport Beach-based luxury home brokerage that in 10 years of operation grew into one of the largest agencies for high-end homes along Orange County’s coast.
In May, it was folded into the Southern California division of Coldwell Banker Realty. He described the deal with Coldwell as a merger; terms of the deal were undisclosed.
NEXT STEPS: Jabara told the Business Journal last year that he continues to be on the lookout for other commercial real estate investments. “We’ll be rolling into some great assets,” he said. He generally tends to stay out of the news and isn’t figured prominently on the Boardwalk Investments Group website.
