Article and photos courtesy of LIVE IN Magazine | Sept 1, 2010
The world’s wealthiest
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| Donald Bren |
Donald Bren, 77, received his degree in economics and business administration from the University of Washington, which he attended on a ski scholarship. He was quite the athlete in his younger days, having even tried out for the US Olympic team in 1956. It was in the year 1977 that Bren, along with a group of other investors, purchased the Irvine Company. He in turn bought out all the outstanding shares in the company in 1994, and has since been the sole owner of the Irvine Company, itself owner of the city of Irvine.
Bren calls the Irvine property his ''raw canvas'' and plans to devote the rest of his life to its development. And what a spectacular canvas it is. Irvine Co land begins at the Pacific, with 10,000 acres of scrub brush overlooking a breathtaking stretch of coast. To the north lies Newport Beach, playground of the rich and famous, and on the south is the exclusive enclave of Laguna Beach. The property extends inland in a rough rectangle, spilling across the coastal hills into a rich alluvial valley with thousands of acres on which the company still grows fruits and vegetables. Thence it rolls on into the rugged Santa Ana Mountains, with its easternmost border some 20 miles from the Pacific.
Bren’s ambition is as big as the land he controls. He wants to turn his mostly empty acres into the model American community of the 21st century, filling his canvas with the familiar landmarks of late-20th-century commercial civilisation – office parks, housing tracts, and shopping malls crisscrossed by highways.
Loath to talk about himself, he will pop open a Budweiser aboard his 28-foot power boat as he surveys the coastline and spin grand visions of bringing the timeless beauty of Italian Renaissance architecture to his sun- parched property. Says he: ''Developing this property in the best possible way is the most important thing in my life. I expect to be working on this into my 90s.''
The very lushness of the Irvine holdings that makes them a builder's dream also stands as a major obstacle to their development. In real estate jargon, the Irvine land is an ''in fill'' project, perhaps the largest in the world. It is a hole of open territory surrounded by the established communities of Orange County.
And on Bren's domain are some of the most environmentally sensitive coastal and wetland properties in a state concerned with preserving its dwindling supply of open space and worried about overbuilding. Development on the scale Bren envisions calls for unusual financial prowess, a deft feel for politics, and first-rate public relations skills.
He follows a ''build and hold'' strategy – unconventional in the real estate business. Unlike most developers, whose time horizons can best be measured in nanoseconds as they scramble to extract capital from one completed project so they can finance the next, Bren works from a plan that could take 35 years to complete. He refuses to think of his holdings as a portfolio of assets to be swapped or sold and says flatly, ''There is no price that is acceptable.''
Bren knows that the ultimate value of his property depends on his adding aesthetically pleasing new developments that raise the worth of all that has preceded them and enrich the quality of residents' lives. This is the happiest of business imperatives, for besides making the owner wealthier it helps him win trust – and building permits – from the state agencies and local zoning boards that exert approval power over his plans.
Bren's conservative approach to financing also reinforces public confidence in his company's stability while giving it the staying power to ride out a real estate slump.
Perhaps Bren's strongest suits are his passionate pursuit of perfection and a compelling drive to succeed. They are characteristics jarringly at odds with his quintessentially Southern California personality. Lean and tanned, he looks more like Clint Eastwood than like a corporate tycoon. He is portrayed as a playboy billionaire, squiring stunningly attractive women to social events and weekend ski trips to Aspen, Colorado. But beneath it all he tends to be a loner with a small circle of close friends, and has garnered the reputation of being a notorious recluse.
Top quality is Bren’s guiding principle. To give his properties the look he desires, he dispatched a team of executives on a fact-finding mission to visit Mediterranean coastal towns. They brought back photos showing the colours and styles Bren wants to emulate. He had the pictures bound and handed out as inspiration for developers to get the subtle touches right.
Bren's fingerprints are on everything down to the smallest detail. When a recent new high-rise was planned, the company erected scaffolding in the parking lot of its Newport Beach headquarters so the chairman could see how the light played off marble slabs and glass at different times of day. Cost doesn't seem to bother him. Says Donald Koll, a wealthy competitor and friend: ''He'll plant 50-foot palm trees. The rest of us buy 20-foot palms and hope they'll grow.''
For a technology park called Irvine Spectrum, Bren spent US$250 million laying roads and constructing a freeway overpass and other infrastructure before breaking ground on a single building. All this has created an aesthetically appealing mix and a pleasant quality of life.
Clusters of graceful marble office towers sit in manicured settings. Surrounding these are residential properties adorned in stucco with clay tile. Houses range in price from US$1 million mansions to US$170,000 starter condos in mixed-income developments like Westpark.
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| Irvine Spectrum Centre |
Shopping malls with colonnades, fountains, and shady arches like Fashion Island in Newport Beach evoke a feeling more akin to an Old World marketplace than a tacky shop-o-rama. His office parks draw top-flight corporate tenants that include AT&T, Toshiba, and Hewlett- Packard. No wonder Bren is pleased with what he has achieved so far.
Bren, 77, is staunch Republican and has supported McCain and Sara Palin in Presidential elections. He takes an active part in philanthropic activities, and has schools named after him at the University of California in Irvine and Santa Barbara.
He has been married three times and has seven children, three of whom were born out of wedlock. In 2003, the mother of two of those children came forward and began a legal battle with Bren over child support, claiming that she was not receiving what was due to her, based on Bren’s income. Bren attempted to hide his actual assets, claiming a right to privacy.
Source: Fortune magazine
Note: This article is republished with permission from Ericane JC Communications Sdn Bhd, an associate company of Ericane & Webb Sdn Bhd and publisher of Live In magazine. Live In combines both property and home décor - a natural marriage of property information and interior décor ideas to realise a beautiful, comfortable home.
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