Big Deals Didn’t Bring Big Paydays for O’Neill Family

The decades-long dissection of the O’Neill family ranch into Mission Viejo, Rancho Santa Margarita and other suburbs has yielded the owners only one big payday, family scion Anthony R. Moiso says.

That was long ago--in 1972--when the family and its partners sold Mission Viejo Co., Moiso told a recent meeting of the Building Industry Assn. of Orange County.

“We became pretty greedy and we sold--to Philip Morris--for more money than we ever thought existed in the world,” Moiso said. The O’Neill group received $52 million.

He said hopes of profits on two other projects on the O’Neill property, Rancho Santa Margarita and Las Flores, by and large evaporated in the recession earlier this decade.

Moiso is still carving up the ranch, now as president of Rancho Mission Viejo LLC, whose new project is the 8,100-home Ladera Ranch in South Orange County.

When Irish cattleman Richard O’Neill and a partner bought it in 1882, the Rancho Santa Margarita y las Flores stretched for 230,000 acres from Mission Viejo to Oceanside. The biggest chunk lopped off over the years was for the Marine Corps’ Camp Pendleton in 1942. About 30,000 acres remain, including the 4,000 that will become Ladera Ranch.

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E. Scott Reckard covers real estate for The Times. He can be reached at (714) 966-7407 and at scott.reckard@latimes.com