Subject: Real Estate Sector

• Gotcha, Kajima!

  March 9, 2000

• What's in a name?

  Jonathan Lansner has an interesting column in today's Reg on how the meltdown of Irvine's subprime mortgage monolith, New Century Financial (here's yesterday's New Century bad news, and here's today's fresh New Century bad news), is effecting other financial institutions with similar names. There are unrelated banks named New Century in Illinois, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Kansas. The Irvine-based stench of failure has wafted over all of them, but so far it's only caused embarrassment

  March 29, 2007

• Great Park of Empty Homes?

  According to the funny papers, the justification for tripling the number of homes in Irvine's Great Park is the tremendous demand for new homes. But this just came from the Orange County Business Journal e-mail alert. (We'd link you to the story, but those slick-haired OCBJ money-grubbers make you pay!): PROFIT FALLS AT IRVINE HOMEBUILDER Higher interest rates, more unsold homes, falling affordability and weaker home-buyer confidence contributed to a drop in profit at Irvine-based Standard Paci

  July 27, 2006

• Weekly Move Coincides With Huge Drop in OC Office Rental Market

  They say that timing is everything in the news business. Or is it the guillotine-operation business? Whatever. All I'm saying is OC Weekly has picked a fortuitous time to move, leaving our deluxe penthouse in the fifth floor sky overlooking a Santa Ana Norm's for first-floor digs in office park near John Wayne Airport. Should anyone be wondering, "Hey, isn't 2975 Red Hill Ave., Suite 150, Costa Mesa, CA 92626 extremely close to the Weekly's birthplace in a single-story office park at Red Hill an

  January 7, 2009

• Alleged Fraud Within Irvine City Limits Keeps SEC, Whistleblower Busy

  Two corporations doing business in Irvine that are the subjects of a noteworthy/notorious whistleblower's fraud investigations have now apparently drawn the attention of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.The SEC is reviewing whether James Peterson, CEO of Irvine-based defense industry computer chip maker Microsemi Corp., misled investors when he denied making up his college degrees, reports Bloomberg. The same consumer group that outed Peterson now says it is cluing in the SEC to alleg

  February 2, 2009

• Segerstrom Towers Achieve LEED-EB Gold Certification

  Plaza TowerSegerstrom Co., the developer of South Coast Plaza and most of the Costa Mesa-Santa Ana-straddling South Coast Metro area, announced this week that its Plaza Tower, Center Tower and Park Tower achieved LEED-EB Gold Certification, the first multi-tenant buildings in California and three of the first four buildings in the U.S. to receive that particular U.S. Green Building Council distinction.The Leadership and Environmental Design for Existing Building Operations & Maintenance (LEE

  March 27, 2009

• Study: Generation Y Will Rescue Ailing Housing Market

  The nation will be pulled out of the housing crisis by an unlikely demographic, according to study by The Concord Group of Newport Beach, a "strategic" analyst of the real estate industry. "Like the early Baby Boomers in the 1946 to 1964 era, the 80-million strong Generation Y today will make up the wave of future homeowners in the U.S.," reports what is believed to be the first major national housing survey of its kind.Generation Y, states the report, is generally bullish on the housing market,

  April 13, 2009

• Mayor McCheese

  July 24, 2008

• Main Offender

  Garden Grove merchants say the city cut corners to let insider Steve Sheldon build condos

  April 26, 2007

• Slime Away

  September 9, 2004

• Diary of a Mad County

  February 27, 2003

• 3BD 3BA Underwater

  February 6, 2003

• Real Great Tax

  February 14, 2002

• Shut Up, Dave

  March 22, 2001

• Super Dave Christensen

  October 5, 2000

• Another Dave, Another Scandal

  September 21, 2000

• Even Swanky Hotel Owners Can't Afford Their Mortgage

  Sunstone Hotel Investors Inc., a San Clemente-based real estate investment trust, will default on the June mortgage payment for its swanky W Hotel San Diego property and turn over the 258-room downtown hotel to lenders, after failing to lower interest payments.The hotel has been hurt by "significant and continuing deterioration in demand for luxury lodging" as well as the opening of luxury boutique hotels nearby, Sunstone officials say in their Sunday announcement carried by the Associated Press

  June 8, 2009

• Swanky St. Regis Resort Could Go on Auction Block

  Monday we told you about Sunstone Hotel Investors Inc., a San Clemente-based real estate investment trust, walking away from its mortgage for the swanky, 258-room W Hotel in downtown San Diego. R. Scott Reckard and Roger Vincent over at the Los Angeles Times report today that one of Orange County's upper-crustiest inns is on the ropes: St. Regis at Monarch Beach.Yes, that's the infamous resort where American International Group (AIG) sponsored a luxury retreat just days after accepting a federal

  June 10, 2009

• Agran Crony and Gore Campaigner Agrees to Guilty Pleas in Federal Wire Fraud Case

  Irvine attorney Sandeep Baweja, the 39-year-old money man for that town's "progressive" political boss Larry Agran and a former official with Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign, agreed in court papers to plead guilty to two felony charges related to a scheme where he ripped off nearly all of the $2.7 million he'd previously won for his clients, the FBI announced today.In a plea agreement prosecutors filed late Thursday in United States District Court in Los Angeles, Baweja indicates he will pl

  October 2, 2009

• Bolsa Chica Boneyard Builder Brightwater Bankrupt

  ​We missed this yesterday, but still think you should know: The company that owns Brightwater -- the company that wanted to build 300-something homes on Huntington Beach wetland -- announced it was filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Wednesday.Both naturalists and Native Americans strenuously fought approval for Brightwater's planned Bolsa Chica development. The plan was ultimately given the okay -- just as the housing market crashed.Now, California Coastal Communities Inc. faces a $182 million d

  October 29, 2009