Most Smith Employees Retained After Sale of Empire

A day after the sale of Oxnard developer Martin V. “Bud” Smith’s real estate empire was concluded, many former Smith employees no longer had jobs but most returned to work Friday for a new employer.

Tiger Real Estate Partners, a New York investment firm, closed the estimated $150-million deal with Martin V. Smith & Associates on Thursday.

With the purchase, Tiger Real Estate takes over properties that include the landmark Oxnard Financial Plaza, eight hotels, more than 1,000 apartment units and several restaurants.

Executives would not disclose the number of Smith’s estimated 975 employees who were let go in the transition, but said the deal left fewer than 20% of them--or about 195--jobless.

“I think the number of employees retained is better than 80%,” said Richard Spencer, the former executive vice president of Martin V. Smith & Associates, who on Friday joined Tiger Real Estate as a consultant.

Spencer said Smith gave the employees, who were told Thursday that their jobs had ended, a termination bonus based on their length of service. But Spencer would not reveal details of the severance package.

“That is a personal matter between the employer and employees,” he said. Some former Smith employees retained in the transfer said they were glad to keep their paychecks, but a little nostalgic about the changing of the guard.

“It’s the end of an era is what it is,” said a waitress at the Lobster Trap restaurant in Oxnard, who asked not to be identified. However, six employees had been let go, she said. “It is really sad.”

Bill Solomon, the interim general manager of the Casa Sirena Marina Resort, said about 10 out of 165 employees had not been rehired by the hotel and the Lobster Trap, which is part of the hotel complex.

Solomon, who came to Oxnard with Boykin Management Co., the Cleveland-based firm hired by Tiger Real Estate to oversee its newly acquired hostelries, said the resort lost workers from all ranks.

“It was spread all over,” he said.

Solomon added that a make-over for the 273-room resort might be in the works.

“We are a new company and we have some different visions for the property,” he said. “I am hoping we will get some capital repair dollars and freshen the look.”

Romulo Villanueva, a hotel housekeeping employee, said he was glad to be picked up by the new company but was concerned about those who lost their jobs.

“I worry for them. We have been here for a long time.”

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Tiger Real Estate has not yet purchased the Oxnard Hilton, the ninth hotel in the deal, because workers are reinforcing the hotel’s six-story tower against earthquakes. The work is expected to be completed in about two weeks, allowing that deal to go through.

Kay Morter, the Hilton’s general manager, said Boykin Management has announced that most of the hotel’s 100 employees will keep their jobs when it takes over the property.

“At this point, I would say 99% of the employees will be retained by Boykin,” Morter said.

Before the deal went through, about 660 employees worked in Smith-owned hotels, which contain about 1,268 rooms in total.

Russell Goodman, an executive with the real estate firm hired to manage the commercial and residential properties in the Tiger deal, said his firm retained about 160 of the 200 Smith employees affiliated with those properties.

“Most of the people were fit into new positions very well,” said Goodman, president of the Ventura County regional operation of the Sares-Regis Group. “We are now going to be familiarizing ourselves fully with the properties . . . and introducing ourselves to the tenants.”

Claudia Hobbs, an assistant manager at Villa Sirena & Anchorage Waterfront Apartments in Oxnard, said the new management terminated two employees at her complex Thursday afternoon.

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Bud Smith labored more than 50 years to build his real estate portfolio, which stretches from Calabasas to Santa Maria. Tiger Real Estate has purchased the tallest building in Ventura County, the 21-story Financial Plaza Tower in Oxnard, as well as the 15-story Ventura County National Bank building nearby, as part of the deal.

Although executives would not disclose the precise amount of the pact Friday, at $150 million it would rank among Ventura County’s largest real estate transactions of the past decade.

Tiger Real Estate Partners controls a $784-million real estate investment fund and has set up a new company called Channel Islands Harbor Associates to oversee the properties acquired from Smith.

Real estate analysts Friday called the transaction unique in size and scope and said that despite the job losses, the investment bodes well for the county.

“I think it is good to have outside capital coming in,” said Fred Ferro, vice president of Capital Commercial Real Estate in Oxnard. “It is good for the area generally, for its perception outside of the area and I think it just reaffirms the . . . recovery of the economy here.”

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Smith will hold on to more than 15 of his properties, including the Carriage Square Shopping Center in Oxnard and the 50-acre Wagon Wheel motel complex, which he plans to redevelop.

Smith did not return phone calls Friday but Spencer, who has worked as the developer’s top assistant for more than 20 years, said Smith “has plenty to do.”

Spencer said both sides were happy with the deal, but he believes it was not without some regret that Smith parted with the bulk of his vast portfolio.

“I suspect that anyone who has achieved the level that Mr. Smith has is probably touched with seller’s remorse a little bit,” Spencer said.