Qintex Buys 2 Orange County Resort Properties for $245 Million

Australian entrepreneur Christopher Skase’s Qintex Group, which just four months ago agreed to acquire the United Artists movie studio, has purchased two major coastal properties in Orange County for a price believed to be about $245 million.

Qintex, whose Mirage resorts division owns two vacation complexes in Australia and one in Hawaii, plans to build a “five-star integrated Mirage resort” on the two sites, including a hotel, spa, retail center and residential villas.

Skase said in a telephone interview Friday that the exact plans for the two parcels had not been finalized and that construction would not begin for about two years. He said having the two properties, which together total about 350 acres, would give the project “critical mass” and made the purchases a “superior economic package to what would have been possible” with the parcels by themselves.

One of the parcels, known as Monarch Beach, was purchased from a real estate partnership that included David Stein, Barry Brief and the hotel operator Hemmeter Corp. for a reported $130 million. The 115-acre Dana Headlands property was purchased from the Chandler-Sherman Corp. for a reported $115 million.

James Kelley, a Newport Beach-based hotel consultant, said the high prices garnered for the Monarch Beach and Chandler-Sherman properties reflects a tremendous ongoing demand for resort sites on the coast. “There is nothing to indicate that demand for coastal resorts has been satisfied in Southern California,” he said. “Offshore investors in particular have placed an extremely high value on coastal resorts.”

Last March, Qintex announced that two Japanese firms--Mitsui & Co. and Nippon Shinpan Co.--had purchased a 49% stake in the three existing Mirage resorts for $350 million. Skase said Friday that it was “likely they would be present” in the Orange County project but there had been no final determination.

Both properties have already received approvals for resort development, a key factor in making them attractive to Qintex. Skase also said the company was impressed with the enormous growth of Orange County and its proximity to major population centers and attractions such as Disneyland.

Qintex, which the dapper 40-year-old Skase built from scratch, owns Australia’s largest television network and will soon complete the purchase of the United Artists film operations from MGM in a deal that will cost the Australian company $600 million.

Staff writer Michael Flagg contributed to this story.