Hon’s Ante Is $200 Million in His Biggest Gamble Yet : Acquisition: The Laguna Hills developer’s down payment on some of the nation’s choicest golf courses and other property is part of the $967-million price for Landmark Land Co.’s holdings.

Five years ago, developer Barry G. Hon quit as chairman of Tustin-based Eldorado Bank and decided to try to build a bigger pile of gold in real estate.

Hon has found riches. He also found fulfillment, frustration and foes as his Hon Development Corp. in Laguna Hills took on increasingly larger and more complex projects from Foothill Ranch in South Orange County to the controversial plans for a resort hotel and residential community in Rancho Palos Verdes.

Now, Hon is attempting the biggest gamble of his career. He must come up with more than $200 million in cash as a down payment for his $967-million purchase of Landmark Land Co.’s vast real estate holdings, including some of the nation’s choicest golf course properties.

There are those skeptical that Hon can pull off the deal. Investors who are betting that Landmark’s stock will fall contend that the deal is suspect, aimed more at appeasing federal regulators who are poring over questionable real estate deals made by Landmark and its primary subsidiary, Oak Tree Savings Bank in New Orleans.

The properties Hon is buying are funded, owned and managed by Oak Tree and its subsidiaries. Landmark had to sell the properties to satisfy new federal regulations limiting equity real estate investments by thrifts.

While the proposed acquisition has thrown Hon into the spotlight, it is clearly not a place he relishes. A quiet man publicly, the 51-year-old Arkansas native said the negative side effect of his growing operation is the publicity it has engendered.

“I hate it,” he said flatly.

Hon is a multifaceted person.

He is a “creative” developer, said Gerald G. Barton, Landmark’s chairman. And a former Orange County Planning Commission member recalled that Hon and his company were “straight-arrows.”

In building his company, Hon has also been building bridges with civic leaders as well as local and national politicians. He said he has supported all five of the Orange County supervisors.

He is a fundamentalist Christian who supported Presidential candidate Pat Robertson in 1988. Campaign records show he and his wife, Valerie, contributed $20,000 to a political action group headed by televangelist Robertson. They also gave a total of $2,000 to Robertson’s presidential campaign effort.

Hon has also been active in civic matters. He is a board member of the South Coast Medical Center, a founder of the Orange County Performing Arts Center and a former member of the now idle Orange County Transportation Commission’s Toll Road Task Force.

But some say there is a darker side to Hon the developer. A Silverado Canyon resident charged that Hon Development wasn’t forthright about its Foothill plans and misled the public, if not county supervisors, on a number of issues. And a Rancho Palos Verdes councilman said the developer can “play hardball.”

While the public exploration of his endeavors is troubling, Hon indicates that it will not stop him from pursuing the grand plans he has for the Landmark properties, which he is buying and running separately from Hon Development.

In a two-phase purchase agreement, subject to regulatory approval and his own review of the assets, Hon will pick up 19 golf courses, four hotels and thousands of acres of residential and commercial land, much of it ready for development and sale to builders.

The deal, one of the largest real estate transactions in the country this year, includes such well-known resorts as PGA West, La Quinta Golf and Tennis Resort, Mission Hills Country Club, all near Palm Springs, and Palm Beach Polo and Country Club in West Palm Beach, Fla.

He isn’t buying just the properties, though, he’s acquiring the operating companies with 3,500 employees who design and operate hotels and resort properties and develop land primarily for residential use, anchoring the home sites, as Hon does, with golf courses.

“It’s important to us to buy the operating companies so we have the team with the experience of building a championship project,” Hon said. “I wanted not only the golden eggs but the goose that laid the golden eggs.”

Though Landmark’s golf course projects are all in the United States, “its name and reputation is worldwide,” Hon said. Taking advantage of that reputation, he wants eventually to expand the operations internationally, building or managing golf courses in other countries.

Hon Development has previously used the Landmark golf course team in its Southern California developments.

But his recent deals have engendered some skepticism and criticism.

“As you grow bigger, you become a bigger target,” Hon said philosophically.

In the Landmark deal, so-called short sellers--those who invest with the hope that the company’s price will fall--contend that Landmark is a troubled company under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission and thrift regulators. The investigators have questioned the accounting on some of Landmark’s real estate deals.

The critics believe that the sale to Hon is merely for show and a delaying tactic. They believe that Hon will be unable to finance it or will have to sell off properties to complete the deal.

But Barton denied that Landmark is in any trouble, and Hon said he will come up with the needed money--more than $200 million in total--himself and will not sell any of the prime golf courses or hotels to do it. The only sales, he said, will be the usual sales of residential and commercial land to builders.

In the 2,750-acre Foothill project, Hon has been praised by some for figuring a way to develop the old Whiting Ranch that other developers, including Barton, had passed on. But he has done it at a cost to the environment, others say.

Sherry Meddick, a Silverado Canyon resident and environmentalist, contended that Hon Development executives weren’t forthright. “When they were standing up saying one thing, they were doing another,” she said. The company, for instance, hadn’t surveyed property that executives said was staked out already, and the company was bulldozing land without permits.

Alden Kelly, a Fullerton arborist hired by Hon Development to work out a plan to save trees in Foothill Ranch, accused the company of using him to make it look as if it were truly interested in saving trees.

“The pattern that emerged was that they did what was necessary to look good and get approved, and when the gates were closed, they’d do what they wanted--get rid of trees and build,” Kelly said. “Their basic approach is make as much as you can as fast as you can and to hell with the environment.”

Hon, however, said he doesn’t believe that his firm has misled anyone. His company spent more than $3 million keeping or relocating up to 90% of the trees in Foothill. “For that money, we could have planted a forest,” he said.

Times staff writer Michael Flagg contributed to this report.

HON & HIS COMPANY

NAME: Barry G. Hon

AGE: 51

OWNER: Hon Development Corp. in Laguna Hills.

EDUCATION: Bachelor’s degree in economics from University of Tulsa, 1960.

BACKGROUND:

* Hon Development founded in Orange County in mid-1960s as a real estate development firm. It has developed more than 10,000 acres of county land since.

* Company owns more than 5,000 acres in Orange County, including 2,750-acre Foothill Ranch.

* Former chairman of Eldorado Bank.

* Board member of South Coast Medical Center and a founder of the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

OTHER PROJECTS:

* Landmark properties: Hon has agreed to buy 19 golf courses and four hotels, more than 10,000 acres of residential and commercial land in three states.

* Foothill Ranch: 2,750-acre mixed-use development in South Orange County.

* Rancho Palos Verdes: Planned resort hotel, residential development and two golf courses. Source: Times research