Two prized coastal properties in Dana Point that are scheduled for resort development have been sold to an Australian entrepreneur for about $245 million.
Christopher C. Skase, who burst upon the Southern California scene in March when his Qintex Group agreed to buy the United Artists movie studio, said Friday that he plans to build a "five-star integrated resort" on the two sites, known as Monarch Beach and the Dana Point headlands. The properties are less than a mile apart off Coast Highway.
The 232-acre parcel at Monarch Beach was sold by a partnership of Stein-Brief Group and hotel operator Hemmeter Corp. for an estimated $130 million. The 115-acre Dana Point headlands, a series of oceanfront cliffs that offer spectacular ocean views, was bought from Chandler-Sherman Corp. for about $115 million.
Skase said he could not directly confirm the prices but indicated that the figures are close to the mark.
Skase said from Australia that plans for the two properties have not been finalized but will include a hotel, a health spa, a retail center and residential villas.
The Links at Monarch Beach golf course will be upgraded to championship quality, he said.
Qintex, through its Mirage Resorts division, owns and operates two vacation centers in Australia and one on the Hawaiian island of Kauai at Princeville. Skase said construction would not begin in Dana Point for about two years.
Having the two properties, which together total 347 acres, would give the project "critical mass" and made the purchases a "superior economic package to what would have been possible" if the properties had remained separate, Skase said.
The Qintex purchase comes on the heels of the sale last week of the nearby Dana Point Resort to a Japanese company for about $104 million. Just 16 months earlier, the same hotel had sold for $65 million.
James Kelley, a Newport Beach-based hotel consultant, said the high prices garnered for the three Dana Point properties reflect a tremendous, ongoing demand for resort sites on the coast.
'Extremely High Value'
"There is nothing to indicate that demand for coastal resorts has been satisfied in Southern California," he said. "Offshore investors in particular have placed an extremely high value on coastal resorts."
The new Mirage Resorts plans, together with the Dana Point Resort and the hugely successful Ritz-Carlton, also in Dana Point, will cap the transformation of the south county coast into a major resort destination.
