Whiting Ranch to Be Developed After Sale to Laguna Hills Firm
Hon Development Co. has entered escrow to buy the 2,700-acre Whiting Ranch in the south Orange County foothills, ending a nearly four-year search for someone to acquire and develop the virgin land, the property’s manager said Wednesday. Information about the sales price was not available.
The county-approved master plan for the ranch calls for 3,900 homes and 400 acres of commercial and industrial development on the property.
Larry Lynch, vice president of the Sandling Cos., confirmed that Hon, a Laguna Hills developer, intends to buy the ranch from the JC/RG Corp., a subsidiary of the Bank of Montreal.
JC/RG took possession of the ranch in November from Carma Developers of Houston--a subsidiary of Toronto-based Carma Ltd.--as payment in lieu of foreclosure of $35 million that Carma owed on a delinquent loan. At that time, the Sandling Cos. was hired to maintain the property and consult with prospective buyers, Lynch said.
Sandling had managed all of Carma’s Southern California real estate holdings, including Whiting Ranch, since 1979.
Neither officials for the Bank of Montreal nor for Hon could be reached Wednesday to comment on the pending sale.
Lynch said that “a fair number of people” have considered buying the ranch since November and that three parties had made offers--from which the bank selected Hon’s. Lynch said he was not familiar with the financial terms of the deal now in escrow.
Lynch said Carma Developers, which was unwilling to make an estimated $100-million investment required to develop the ranch, had searched in vain for a buyer since late 1982. Developer interest in the property has perked up recently, he said, with the lowering of construction and mortgage interest rates.
“It is a lot more dynamic marketplace now,” Lynch said.
In addition, Lynch said, the Whiting Ranch, poised on the edge of the county’s southeastern frontier--north of the communities of El Toro and Lake Forest and east of the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station--is becoming less remote with a recent home building boom that has spread over surrounding rangeland.
Within the last year, construction on hundreds of houses has begun in developments near Whiting Ranch, including Glenn Ranch, the Robinson Ranch, Rancho Santa Marguerita, Coto de Caza, Rancho de Los Alisos and Portola Hills.
Development of the Whiting Ranch long has been mired in controversy. Kent B. Rogers, an Orange County businessman who agreed to purchase the ranch in 1975 for $2 million, made a $400,000 down payment but never paid the remaining $1.6 million. Rogers later was convicted of fraudulently attempting to conceal the ranch from creditors in a bankruptcy action.
The ranch, put up for auction by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court, was purchased in July, 1979, for $12 million by a group of Iranian investors who sold it to Carma Developers the next December for an undisclosed price.
