Japan Foreign Investments Orange County

A major Japanese financial concern said Friday that it has agreed to acquire a 231-acre swath of seaside land known as Monarch Beach for more than $100 million from Qintex, the troubled Australian entertainment and resort company. Tokyo-based Nippon Shinpan Co. Ltd.

A Japanese food giant has bought 5.2 acres in Garden Grove, where it plans to build a 158,000-square-foot food processing facility. House Food Industrial Co., based in Osaka, Japan, bought a lot at Orangewood and Western avenues for $3.8 million in a deal that closed March 31, said Wayne Lambert, a broker at the Seeley Co. in Anaheim. It was not immediately known how many employees would work at the site or when the food processing facility would be built.

The largest Irvine land sale in a decade closed this week when Japanese noodle maker Maruchan Inc. purchased 32 acres in the Irvine Spectrum office and industrial complex. The price, which was not disclosed, was estimated by sources familiar with the transaction at about $14 million. The company plans to build a new manufacturing facility, which it may consolidate with the two smaller manufacturing sites it has in Irvine. Those operations now employ 300 people.

Japanese investors had virtually no interest last year in what was behind the Orange Curtain. A Kenneth Leventhal & Co. survey shows that their investment in Orange County real estate was next to nothing--not much of a surprise, though, considering that they had spent only $32 million for property here in 1991.

When Japan's Tokyo Masuiwaya California Corp. snatched up the Dana Point Resort for about $104 million last year, it was playing a small role in a much-larger story that had foreign investors playing an ever bigger part in the U.S. economy. Foreign investors in 1989 continued to pour more money into the United States economy than Americans were investing abroad, and America's foreign debt burden surged 25% to $663.7 billion.

A Japanese developer unveiled plans Tuesday to build $400 million worth of office towers, shops, a hotel and housing north of Santa Ana's downtown in one of the largest real estate developments in the city. The project, if approved and completed, will forge another link in the massive redevelopment of Santa Ana's aging Main Street, which runs between the city's northern and southern boundaries. Under current plans, Shimizu America Corp.

New Silicon Valley?: Japanese companies' appetite for U.S. high-technology companies will continue to rise despite upheavals in Japan's financial markets, according to a lawyer who specializes in Japan-U.S. mergers and acquisitions. Lisa M. Kitsuta, a Newport Beach attorney who met last week with executives from Japan's top companies in Tokyo and Osaka, said she noticed "a tremendous interest in Orange County by Japanese companies" during her visit.

Stung by criticism that their support for local charities has been lackluster, a team of Japanese business executives has begun an aggressive campaign to draw contributions from more of the county's 160 Japanese companies. Led by Yoshinori Taura, president of Mazda Motor of America Inc.

The largest Irvine land sale in a decade closed this week when Japanese noodle maker Maruchan Inc. purchased 32 acres in the Irvine Spectrum office and industrial complex. The price, which was not disclosed, was estimated by sources familiar with the transaction at about $14 million. The company plans to build a new manufacturing facility, which it may consolidate with the two smaller manufacturing sites it has in Irvine. Those operations now employ 300 people.

Clearing the way for the biggest resort yet along coastal Orange County, the California Coastal Commission gave unanimous approval Tuesday to the planned Monarch Beach Resort in Dana Point. Often likened to Monterey Peninsula's famed Pebble Beach, the 225-acre Monarch Beach Resort will be a golf-residential-hotel complex. The owner is the Japanese credit card giant Nippon Shinpan Ltd.

After buying $626 million worth of Orange County real estate in 1990, the Japanese virtually pulled out in 1991--spending only $32 million here. According to a survey released Thursday by the Newport Beach office of Kenneth Leventhal & Co., Japanese real estate investment plunged 95% last year from the previous year--Orange County's biggest ever for Japanese activity. In 1990, Orange County ranked fifth nationally in Japanese investment; in 1991, it didn't even make the charts.

Stung by criticism that their support for local charities has been lackluster, a team of Japanese business executives has begun an aggressive campaign to draw contributions from more of the county's 160 Japanese companies. Led by Yoshinori Taura, president of Mazda Motor of America Inc.

A major Japanese insurance company has acquired the Inn at Laguna for an estimated $20 million in cash. Sunfolio Inn Inc., a Laguna Beach subsidiary of Tokyo-based Sunway Inc., acquired the 70-room, five-story hotel in September, according to Phillip H. Wilhelm, a partner at Huron Partners, the Chicago real estate investment firm that previously owned the property.

Canon, the Japanese electronics giant, announced plans Wednesday to transfer production of some electronic typewriters from Japan to Costa Mesa and add 600 workers to its local payroll by 1989. The $24.8-million investment reflects an effort by Canon to move manufacturing closer to its biggest market for electronic typewriters--the United States--and respond to continuing trade tensions and the strong Japanese yen, Canon officials said.

Japanese investors had virtually no interest last year in what was behind the Orange Curtain. A Kenneth Leventhal & Co. survey shows that their investment in Orange County real estate was next to nothing--not much of a surprise, though, considering that they had spent only $32 million for property here in 1991.

They're not scrambling to sell yet, but Japanese ardor for U.S. real estate has definitely cooled amid fears of an economic recession, Mideast war and the plunge in the Tokyo stock market, a new report concludes. In an interim report released Tuesday, Kenneth Leventhal & Co. has reduced its estimate of 1990 Japanese investment in the United States to a range of $10 billion to $13 billion, from a previous forecast of $13 billion to $16 billion. The new figure is below the 1989 spending of $14.

With the acquisition of the 232-acre Monarch Beach here, Nippon Shinpan Co. finds itself on the leading edge of what some real estate experts say is a new trend: Japanese companies developing--rather than merely buying--U.S. real estate projects. Japan's largest credit card company didn't set out to be on the cutting edge. Building a resort here was originally the job of Qintex, an Australian company which got itself overextended last year and wound up tumbling into receivership and bankruptcy.