Real Estate Developers

David Joyce marched his way to the front of the U.S. immigration line using his pocketbook, sinking half a million dollars into a Vermont ski resort. The British citizen had spent years in a futile effort to secure green cards for himself, his wife and their 9-year-old son so they could relocate to sunny Florida. Then, a fellow emigre tipped him off to a little-known federal program that helps foreigners gain permanent U.S. residency by investing in American businesses. Graphic: Number of investors' visas to U.S. "In six months, we had our green cards," said Joyce, 51. "Considering everything we've been through, this was easy.

Paralyzed by a spinal cord injury in 1986, real estate developer Rogers Severson sought out a leading rehabilitation facility after doctors told the former college athlete he'd never walk again. Six months later, he walked out of Casa Colina Center for Rehabilitation in Pomona with the aid of a cane and the realization that he possessed what most patients there did not: excellent insurance and the personal means to pay for top-flight care. He vowed to help change that. Almost a year to the day after he was thrown from a mule, breaking two vertebrae, Severson stood before those gathered at a fundraising luncheon to benefit the charity he'd founded, the Spinal Cord Injury Special Fund.

Home buyers are scarce as desert rain clouds, builders' financing sources are going the way of the passenger pigeon and the William Lyon Co. is planning for the future as zestfully as if it were entering the booming 1960s. Crazy? Well, a hallmark of Lyon's nearly 40 years in the residential construction business is that he has mostly been right. And Lyon, the nation's leading home builder last year in sales volume, seems to think this is a great time for a builder who is willing to stretch.

California commercial real estate developers and their bankers are growing optimistic about their industry's prospects, a report said. Although the national economy has given mixed signals in the last six months, California's markets for office and industrial space have made progress, albeit uneven, according to the semiannual Allen Matkins UCLA Anderson Forecast. "The progress, such as it is, has been driven by the steady employment gains in coastal California," the report said.

The first sign of trouble came almost immediately after Kurt and Michelle Dahlin moved into Lancaster's new Westview Estates in March 2007. The water slowed to a trickle midway through showering. The toilet tank took two hours to refill. The family often was forced to bathe at 4 a.m. -- before the neighbors awoke and the water flow became a dribble. Some days, there was no water at all. Things only got worse as more homeowners moved into the gated community on the outskirts of Lancaster.

A group of Riverside County residents who claim they needlessly lost their homes in the recent fires are teaming up with local developers to campaign for changes in federal laws designed to protect endangered animals and plants. About half a dozen burned-out families in the Winchester area of south Riverside County say their homes might have been saved if government officials had given them permission to clear the brush and build firebreaks around their property earlier this year.

The charity project was supposed to take one day and cost about $60,000 in time and materials. But the project ended up requiring three days and cost an additional $10,000. "A waterline got broken, which complicated things," said Jan Standley, spokeswoman for Catellus Development Corp. The Anaheim office of the San Francisco-based developer donated its efforts--and then some--last weekend to installing a private sewer system at Hillview Acres Children's Home in Chino.

A $2-million damage suit was filed Tuesday against the real estate developers who allegedly tried to illegally demolish the McKinley Mansion, a historic Lafayette Park residence built more than 70 years ago by a Los Angeles mortuary mogul.

Faced with a glut of retail space and weakening office rents, many Los Angeles-area developers are adding high-density housing to properties that once would have been reserved strictly for offices or stores. The combination of homes and businesses in the same building or block goes against decades of standard development practices.

Three years ago, real estate developer Kichinosuke Sasaki, 59, traveled regularly to Italy. He took Jeep rides into the mountains to personally pick out the finest marble for his luxury office complexes. He could afford to be picky. His $4 billion worth of properties--92 buildings in the center of Tokyo--made him one of a handful of Japan's richest billionaires. Today, those lavishly furnished buildings of marble and granite are like tombstones marking the death of an era.

Donald M. Koll, a real estate developer who pioneered high-rise office building in Orange County and among other projects helped turn Los Cabos, Mexico, into a premier resort destination, has died. He was 78. Koll died Tuesday at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center of complications of a heart attack suffered Dec 2. He had been in ill health since having a stroke six years ago. Real estate and construction have been in the Koll family for generations. In 1889, Koll's grandfather August founded A.J. Koll, a lumber business in Los Angeles.

Former Dodgers manager Joe Torre has discussed teaming with one of Los Angeles' most prominent real estate developers in pursuing the team. Rick Caruso, whose signature project is the Grove but who has not run a sports franchise, could strengthen a potential bid by aligning with Torre. The discussions between Caruso and Torre were first reported Tuesday by the New York Times and subsequently confirmed by the Los Angeles Times. Charles Sipkins, a spokesman for Caruso, declined to comment.

Two liberal groups have asked the Judicial Conference of the United States to investigate whether Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has violated the federal Ethics in Government Act. The prospect of such an investigation is remote, but the conduct cited by Common Cause and the Alliance for Justice is troubling. The groups have asked the Judicial Conference to consider two possibilities: that Thomas knowingly withheld information about his wife's income from financial disclosure forms, and that he misrepresented the amount of free air travel he received from a wealthy friend.

A Chinese real estate firm with one Los Angeles hotel in its fold closed on a deal to buy the Sheraton Universal hotel, showing a growing trust in a recovery of the hospitality industry and the rising interest of Asian investors in U.S. commercial property. The price of the Sheraton was not disclosed, but industry experts who tracked the deal said Shenzhen New World Group Co. paid about $90 million for the 451-room inn overlooking Universal City. That would make it a deep discount from the $122 million that previous owner Lowe Enterprises paid for the hotel at the top of the market in 2007.

Maybe the name "Sonny" gives you a clue. It's the nickname Hassan Astani chose from a favored singer, Sonny Bono, a scrappy underdog if ever there was one. Astani's dream downtown condo project, Concerto, has gone dissonant. The bank backing the project failed, the FDIC stepped in and the hedge fund Starwood Capital Group won the bidding on the bank's portfolio, including Astani's nearly finished $260-million project. Starwood now shares ownership with the feds, and Astani wants control of his project back.

New York Republicans have been a party on the verge of extinction for almost a decade. They have virtually nobody in Congress and no power in the state capital. The party is so weak that if it doesn't have a good showing in November it could be left with little representation. So given the choice in the GOP gubernatorial primary Tuesday between a "mad as hell" outsider and a party regular whose day job had been to lobby for Wall Street, New York Republicans turned out in larger than usual numbers to vote for Carl Paladino, the anti-establishment candidate.

Amid the half-empty office buildings, the unsold homes and the unemployed, there is one group still finding lots of work in Southern California's tattered real estate market: accountants. When a developer lands in the soup these days, he's as likely to call an accounting firm as anybody else. When the real estate market was hot in the 1980s, some of the big firms expanded into consulting for developers and their financial partners.

Professional Builder Magazine named Kathryn G. Thompson Development Co. in Irvine the fastest-growing home builder in the nation, with a 393% jump in sales from $19.5 million in 1987 to $96.3 million last year. The company sold 506 condominiums and houses last year in Pomona and Aliso Viejo. Kathryn Thompson, who founded the company, has been in California real estate for 25 years.

After backing down from a contentious proposal to demolish the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza hotel, the owner has unveiled plans to construct a high-rise real estate development next to the Space Age landmark that would transform the tenor of Century City's streets and dramatically alter the skyline. The $1.5-billion proposal calls for two 46-story skyscrapers holding hundreds of condominiums and offices to be built behind the renowned hotel on Avenue of the Stars. Nearly half of the guest rooms would be replaced by luxury condos as part of a top-to-bottom makeover.

L.A. County's ambitious light-rail network is about to push deeper into the San Gabriel Valley, and five cities along the route of the long-awaited Gold Line extension hope the trains will bring with them new development. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority will break ground Saturday on a $690 million, 11.3 mile extension of the Gold Line from Pasadena through Arcadia, Monrovia, Duarte, Irwindale and Azusa. The line is scheduled to be completed in 2014. Real estate developers and politicians are hoping the line will pave the way for some new residential and commercial developments in the cities.