Re: 5th Annual Muckenthaler Motor Car Show

Gregory Alan Bolcer (gbolcer@endTECH.com)
Wed, 19 May 1999 12:11:08 -0700


I was talking about buying 80 acres in middle Orange county. Those particular
80 acres stretched from downtown Fullerton all the way to the Riverside
freeway. That land is cumulatively worth about a quarter of a billion
dollars nowadays not inclduing the residential and business dwellings that
are located on it. Currently all that's left of the original property
is approximately 8.5 acres which makes up the cultural center. It's all
primo real estate.

The cost to build an equivalent house in modern day OC once you have the
land and permits is in the tens of millions. Do you know about Porcupine hill in
Laguna Nigel/ San Juan Capistrano? One of the prime real estate OC
hilltops was purchased years ago by a businessman who wanted to build
his dream home. The city and county wouldn't let him build the mansion
as they said it ruined the hillscape. In response, he lined the mile
long driveway all the way up to the current house. If you are driving North
on I-5 a couple of miles before the El Toro Y, you can see the palm trees
sticking up off the hill. The city had a major cow and despite everything
short of illegal seizure of his property, couldn't make him take down
the palm trees, nor were they willing to issue the permits.

Just a little OC history.

Greg

Dave Long wrote:
>
> > In 1921, they
> > bought an 80-acre estate from the Carhart family and set aside this 8-acre hilltopo parcel on which they built
> > their dream home. [Try doing that today anywhere in CA]
>
> There's plenty of land in CA within an hour of civilization for under
> $2000/acre. Or are you referring to the difficulty in obtaining building
> permits?
>
> -Dave