FYI re. El Toro developement :-(

[Bill Schenker]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... eal_estate

[Arthur Grant]

Link didn't work for me.

[Theo O.]

Link didn't work for me.

"In the latest sign that financing is starting to trickle back into California's property market, a group of investors is pumping cash into a huge, but stalled, $1.4 billion master-planned community being developed on the site of a former military base.

Under terms of the investment, Boston-based State Street Bank & Trust Co., a unit of State Street Corp., and a group of investors that includes several private-equity funds and pension funds will provide $400 million in cash and credit to the project, called Heritage Fields at El Toro. The project, in Irvine, Calif., is being developed by Five Point Communities Inc., a company that is majority-owned by home builder Lennar Corp." yada yada yada ....

[Arthur Grant]

Nice sell out of property that was supposed to benefit the whole Orange County community. I would almost rather see an airport than houses there.

[Ken Lord]

It was always supposed to be houses. That is how all the other stuff for the community gets paid for. Nobody is totally altruistic.

[Michael Wood]

The money recently raised for the El Toro deal sounds like kind of a "catch up" round...given a development of that size, they are still far, far away from breaking ground, I would guess. Still, the writing is on the wall. Bummer, El Toro is amazing.

Let's hope that Atwater, or something similar, is back online soon for Pros/Tours. Doesn't help you guys for local stuff, but at least you still have Cal Speedway and other options, right?

This Solo site issue isn't going away, until it is economically feasible to develop a standalone single use site, dedicated to Solo/defensive driving/police training etc that Soloists actually control. In NorCal, we have the perfect place to do it, Thunderhill, but support for actually using our precious site fund for a site that isn't a 15 minute drive for locals (yeah, when monkeys fly out of my butt, to quote Wayne) has been limited. Eventually, we'll have missed any potential TH opportunity, too.

[Joey Schilling]

Who do they think they are taking our place of recreation for more houses in orange county! Ground zero for subrime loans and the housing collapse, by the way. Punks!!!

[Arthur Grant]

It was always supposed to be houses. That is how all the other stuff for the community gets paid for. Nobody is totally altruistic.

Ken, depends on which plan you looked at, who was pushing it and when? I have seen El Toro from the military side, my boss is one of the BRAC team members for the Navy Marine corp that offered the site up, and have watched it politically in OC.

Another negative event is that Cal State Fullerton has decided to move their extention out of El Toro to a commercial site they already say doesn't meet their long term needs as they sign a 7 year lease.

But well take it one day at a time. El Toro should be here this summer and that's good.

[Steve Towers]

The latest article in the Orange County Registers suggests that construction will commence in 2012. Crap.

[Will Kalman]

... construction will commence in 2012. Crap.

Well, that explains the movie. Those runways are actually giant sutures holding the Earth together.

[Steve Ekstrand]

Lennar is really stretched thin. They leveraged themselves to buy up both large amounts of Newhall Land property and El Toro at the same time. I didn't see any way they would get financing to proceed anytime soon with El Toro. So, State St. jumping into the fire took me by surprise. I'd say its very bad news. $500million is not enough to do what they wanted with the project even vastly downsized. But its enough to move forward enough to screw it up for us.

[Doug Kott]

The plot thickens...

http://lansner.ocregister.com/2011/01/1 ... nds/94984/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Arthur Grant]

I would need more information than what is in the article, but for reasons beyond saving our venue, I like the sound of Brown's proposal.
I don't want to be suspicious when a guy chairs an entity dealing with large sums of money and is a councilman with oversight. I am also preplexed when a developer is giving parkland when you have a massive volume of county park land adjacent? I am probably missing something.

Watch and wait.