OK Given for Sale of Kona Kai Club, Inn to Bond Corp.
The San Diego Board of Port Commissioners gave its approval Tuesday to Bond Corp. Holdings Ltd. of Australia acquiring 75% interest in the Kona Kai Club and Kona Inn on Shelter Island for $26 million.
The Australian corporation is controlled by Australian business tycoon and 1983 America’s Cup winner Alan Bond, who plans to use the prime bay-front property as the base for his next Cup challenge, scheduled in 1991.
Selling his 50% interest in the club and hotel to Bond is Dale Rorabaugh, an optometrist and entrepreneur who, with William de Leuuw, bought the two adjoining properties from the Lipin family for $15 million in 1985.
De Leuuw is selling half his 50% interest to the Bond corporation.
Besides the Australian racing syndicate, Japanese and British groups are also expected to base their challengers at the Kona Kai during the next Cup regatta.
Included in the 12.5-acre package is the Kona Inn, a hotel with 86 rooms, and the Kona Kai Club, which includes a private restaurant, a 90-room hotel, two swimming pools, banquet space, tennis courts and a spa. The club owns 538 boat slips.
The Bond corporation has told the Port District it intends to redevelop and renovate the Kona Kai Club.
Bond Corp. is an Australian conglomerate which, among other things, owns Australia’s largest brewery, and which, last year, agreed to pay $1.2 billion for the G. Heileman Brewing Co., the fourth-largest brewer in the United States.
Alan Bond, a chunky, 50-year-old sailor tycoon, is a high school dropout who maintains offices on his Southern Cross yacht on the Mediterranean Sea and in Perth. He is said to have a personal fortune of nearly $300 million and an extensive collection of Impressionist paintings.
