Latest news with #MichaelWaters
Yahoo
25-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Feathered family stuck on a rooftop gets a fairytale ending
Sign up for CNN's Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more. A family of seven recently overstayed their welcome at a swanky, boutique hotel in Atlanta's trendy Old Fourth Ward neighborhood. They didn't have a reservation — but that wasn't the problem. This was a gaggle of Canada geese, nesting on the hotel's rooftop garden patio. Mom and dad had been on the rooftop for awhile, but their five goslings — who were too young to fly — had no way to follow their parents down to a nearby pond, four stories below. Michael Waters, a longtime volunteer with AWARE Wildlife Center, came to the rescue. Even as an experienced wildlife rescuer, Waters said saving the geese was tricky due to their behavior and strong gusts of wind. 'There were five little goslings, and they were all running in a fright,' Waters said. 'The mother and father goose were both present and they both were sort of in their guardian mode and were being very protective.' The goal of the rescue, Waters said, was to collect the entire family to keep them together and relocate them to a pond below. 'The first thing I thought was to collect the little ones because I was just so concerned about them at the precarity of the ledge,' he said. After Waters collected the goslings in a box, he tried to capture the father goose. 'He fought me off of his wing and flew off the building,' Waters said. 'He flew all the way down to the ground and was just honking like a little horror at the base of the building.' Next, Waters tried to save the mother goose, but he realized she was also trying to escape. To prevent her from leaving, Waters released all the goslings, and she came after him trying to protect her babies. 'I was able to secure her in her enclosure, then I was able to collect all the babies again,' Waters said. With the goslings and the mother goose captured, Waters took them outside to release them in the pond. 'Who was waiting there at the pond but the father goose!' Waters said. 'So, it was just perfect.' While the rooftop goslings had never been on the ground or in water before, Waters said they adjusted quickly. 'It was so lovely to see their little instincts step forward,' he said. 'They immediately became amphibious and just waddled out and went out with mom and dad, and they all went to go live their wild lives.' But how did the geese get themselves into this situation? Why would they want to nest on a hotel rooftop? Kara Nitschke, migratory and game bird biologist with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, said Canada geese are very adaptable and easily assimilate. 'In urban and suburban areas, we keep our grass short like golf courses, parks, neighborhoods,' Nitschke said. 'Geese like that because they can walk through that easily.' And she said it's a 'bonus' for the geese if these green spaces have a nearby pond. 'They can run to the water and hop in (if they feel threatened), and they feel perfectly safe and comfy,' she said. The state of Georgia is home to about 250,000 Canada geese, according to Nitschke. Being a migratory species, the birds would make their yearly trip south from Canada. But in the 1970s and '80s when migration slowed, Nitschke said the state stocked the environment with around 8,000 geese — and since then, the population has boomed. Canada geese are federally protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918. That means if someone comes across an injured or orphaned goose or wants to relocate a goose, that person would need a permit to handle it, Nitschke said. If anyone finds a goose or any wildlife that might need help, Nitschke and Waters recommend they call their state wildlife department or a local wildlife rehabilitation center, like Atlanta's AWARE, before interacting with the animal. For Waters, who regularly works with and rescues animals, idealism keeps him motivated to continue his work. 'In any way that we can ameliorate or make better the effects that have consequences for these other beings,' Waters said, 'I want to be someone who gives at least the effort for things to be made better.'
News.com.au
24-04-2025
- Business
- News.com.au
Bottle shops to be shut across NSW on Anzac Day under new rule
New trading restrictions will be enforced across New South Wales this Anzac Day (Friday), forcing most bottle shops to be closed. The legislation passed in NSW last year, and means retailers including supermarkets, bottle shops and alcohol retailers will be shut on April 25. In previous years trading was allowed after 1pm on Anzac Day. The Endeavour Group, that operate bottle shops including Dan Murphy's, BWS and Coles alcohol outlets, have confirmed most stores in NSW will be closed. Select Dan Murphy's and BWS stores attached to Australian Leisure and Hospitality group (ALH) hotels will be open. National industry body Retail Drinks Australia has slammed the new rules, labelling them 'unfair and anticompetitive.' 'As a key sector within the broader liquor industry, our members have retailed responsibly and respectfully on this day for decades, servicing their local communities – they respect the significance and importance of Anzac Day,' chief executive Michael Waters told 9NEWS. He said retailers should be able to open from 1pm, as they have done in the past. 'People taking part in Anzac Day should be able to commemorate however they choose, whether attending community ceremonies, joining family and friends at a BBQ, or having a quiet drink remembering old mates,' Mr Waters said. The NSW government backed the move, saying it better represents the importance of Anzac Day. Western Australia also has restrictions all day on April 25. Anzac Day trading hours NSW: All bottle shops, supermarkets closed, unless exempt. Exemptions include shops attached to ALH hotels, and takeaway sales from pubs. ACT: No restrictions. NT: No restrictions. TAS: Retailers, bottle shops open from 12.30pm. SA: Retailers, bottle shops remain open between 12 and 5pm in Adelaide CBD only. WA: All bottle shops, supermarkets closed, unless exempt.
Daily Mail
24-04-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
Bottle shops react to Aussie state's 'unfair' trading ban on Anzac Day
Australia's national drinks body has slammed a 'discriminatory' mandate that means bottle shops in NSW will be closed on Anzac Day for the first time. Updated laws from the state government will not allow retailers to open on April 25, with trading set to resume on Saturday morning. Retail Drinks Australia criticised the change of legislation as 'unfair, discriminatory, and anti-competitive laws' in a statement this week. The body said the move will impact up to 2,400 liquor retailers across the state, the majority of which are small, family-owned businesses. 'Our members have retailed responsibly and respectfully on this day for decades, servicing their local communities,' CEO Michael Waters said. 'They respect the significance and importance of Anzac Day. 'People taking part in Anzac Day should be able to commemorate however they choose, whether [that is] attending community ceremonies, joining family and friends at a BBQ, or having a quiet drink remembering old mates.' Mr Waters wants bottle shops to open from 1pm, as they have previously done, to ensure consistency, maintain employee protections and support small businesses. Retail Drinks Australia said more than 100 exemption applications lodged with NSW Fair Trading have been rejected. Applicants have reportedly been told they do not meet 'exceptional circumstance' or 'public interest' thresholds. 'We've appealed to the Premier for fairness. We've called on the Minister for Industrial Relations for common sense,' Mr Waters said. 'We're asking the Government to let people live their lives and to be fair and balanced when making laws. The current situation discriminates against bottle shops and makes life unnecessarily harder for people in this state with no clear benefit.' The NSW Government introduced the law in July last year, hoping it would inspire more people to use the day to honour the memory of those who died in service. Premier Chris Minns has previously justified the decision, saying 'no occasion could be more solemn or significant than Anzac Day'. 'It might be inconvenient for a few hours, but closing our biggest corporate shops for a single day is a small price to pay for living in a free and open democracy,' he said. Daily Mail Australia has contacted the NSW Government for further comment. The change was made after a public consultation, which ran from September to October 2023, garnered strong support from veterans, veterans' organisations and the public. The legislation change will also affect other retailers which were previously allowed to open from 1pm, including department stores and supermarkets. Exemptions are in place for other venues including markets, small retailers, bars, cafes, chemists, newsagents and takeaway restaurants. Dan Murphy's and BWS stores attached to ALH Hotels across NSW will also be exempt and will trade in line with the hotel's licence. NSW isn't alone in enforcing full Anzac Day closures. Queensland supermarkets will be shut all day, except for Brisbane Airport's Woolworths, which opens at 1pm. Most Dan Murphy's and BWS stores in other states will trade from 1pm on Anzac Day, except those attached to ALH Hotels, which will trade in line with the hotel's licence.
The Citizen
23-04-2025
- Business
- The Citizen
Budget cuts leave Pretoria's Schools of Specialisation grasping at straws
The future of Pretoria's specialised education is under threat after the Gauteng Department of Education slashed funding to Schools of Specialisation (SoS) by a staggering 81.36% since 2022. Funding dropped from R69.29-million in 2022 to R13-million in 2024, a move the DA said would cripple the province's ability to prepare learners for critical industries such as engineering, biotechnology, science, and manufacturing. 'This reduction hinders equipping learners with critical skills needed to grow the economy,' said Michael Waters, DA member of the provincial legislature. Nine Pretoria-based schools have been severely affected, with some facing serious drops of over 85%. These include institutions in Saulsville, Atteridgeville, Pretoria east, Centurion, Soshanguve, Ga-Rankuwa, and Mamelodi. MEC of the Gauteng Department of Education, Matome Chiloane, informed Gauteng Legislature that ]Edward Phatudi School of Specialisation in Saulsville's allocation plummeted from R3.9-million in 2022 to just over R1-million in 2024. Similarly, the Pro Arte Alphen Park Performing and Creative Arts School in Pretoria east saw a cut from R3-million to R426 300 over the same period. 'These schools of specialisation were opened to great fanfare and are now left to fend for themselves,' said Waters. 'Learners are being denied the very subjects that could prepare them for jobs in competitive, high-demand sectors.' Established between 2018 and 2025, these schools offer advanced education in subjects like nuclear science, automotive skills, creative arts, maths, research and innovation, and more. Some also offer vocational subjects such as hospitality, tourism, agriculture, and beauty technology. These are skills Waters said are vital in fighting the high unemployment rate in Gauteng of 34.4%. While Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi maintains that the province is empowering youth through these institutions, Waters accused the provincial government of pushing them 'into a desperate scramble for funding'. The DA Gauteng has vowed to challenge the cuts and raise the issue at the Gauteng Education Portfolio Committee, calling for urgent review and intervention to prevent long-term damage to learners' futures and the province's economic growth. ALSO READ: Students unite, excel at Fontie Games Do you have more information about the story? Please send us an email to bennittb@ or phone us on 083 625 4114. For free breaking and community news, visit Rekord's websites: Rekord East For more news and interesting articles, like Rekord on Facebook, follow us on Twitter or Instagram or TikTok. At Caxton, we employ humans to generate daily fresh news, not AI intervention. Happy reading!
Bloomberg
27-03-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
Businessweek THE BILLIONAIRE'S TOWN By Michael Waters and John Gittelsohn March 27, 2025 at 5:00 AM EDT Updated on October 30, 2024 at 9:25 AM EDT
Listen: The Billionaire's Town 00:00 29:55 ✕ The Westpark neighborhood of Irvine, developed by Irvine Co., was the city's first Mediterranean-style village. Irvine, California, is a seemingly normal place to live—except one secretive developer controls most of the city. By Michael Waters and John Gittelsohn Photographs by Jessica Chou for Bloomberg Businessweek March 27, 2025 at 5:00 AM EDT Share this article In the summer of 2010, Jennifer Henry moved to Irvine, California, from St. Paul, Minnesota, to attend her first year of law school. She didn't know much about Irvine, except that it had a bit of a Disneyland vibe: Everything felt new and precisely organized, and residents seemed to be brimming with the slightly peculiar hope that, in Irvine, life would be better. Just before the school year began, Henry and two fellow students decided to look for an apartment together. During their search, she kept seeing the same name on all the rentals. 'Every single apartment available was from the Irvine Co.,' she says. 'They were the only game in town.' Henry did consider another apartment in the neighboring city of Costa Mesa, just outside the city limits of Irvine. But in the end, she and her classmates gave in to the inevitable. They landed at Villa Siena, a well-manicured apartment complex complete with a pool, basketball and tennis courts, and a spa—owned, of course, by Irvine Co. It certainly wasn't a bad place to be. But she was fascinated enough that she wrote a law paper about the company's curious influence on the city. Henry left Irvine in 2013 and now lives in Palm Springs. All these years later, the experience has stayed with her. In what other American city did a single landlord have such a hold over the real estate? Not much is different today. For locals it's an open secret. Ashley Bennett, a nurse who grew up in nearby Corona, moved to Irvine a few years ago and ended up calling the Irvine Co. leasing office directly. 'We knew right off the bat that it was going to be the Irvine Co.,' Bennett says. 'I mean, unless you are renting someone's condo or home in Irvine, I don't know that there's any other options.' Almost half the residents of Irvine, just a short drive from Orange County's sun-soaked beaches, are homeowners who live in sprawling subdivisions with multimillion-dollar single-family houses. But if you're renting anything in the city, it's another story. Irvine Co. owns about 75% of the apartment units in the City of Irvine, according to data provided by the property management software company RealPage Inc. (Irvine Co. says it's closer to half of all apartments.) It also owns almost every shopping center in Irvine, as well as many of the city's office spaces. It owns a golf club and a solar panel installation business. Even the Irvine Standard, a community newspaper delivered to residents, is owned by Irvine Co. Properties Owned by Irvine Co. At the helm of Irvine Co. is Donald Bren, the wealthiest real estate developer in America, with about $17.4 billion to his name, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He operates the core of his empire like a one-man homeowners association (HOA). Under his leadership, Irvine Co. sets strict home design standards, requiring windows on all four sides of single-family houses, roofs with ceramic shingles or terra cotta tiles, as well as specific floor area ratios allowing space for yards. Each village gets a plant palette, dictating which types of trees, shrubs and grasses are allowed, and Bren has been known to drive around town and direct his staff to redo aesthetic choices he doesn't like. Many of the city's hallmarks—such as its red-tile-roofed Mediterranean houses—came straight from Bren's affection for Italian Palladian architecture, influencing everything including the city's schools and its fire stations. Bren declined to speak to Bloomberg Businessweek, but Irvine Co. spokesperson Ryan Lilyengren said in an email that the company's decades-long master planning and partnership with the city has provided 'an unmatched quality of life to Irvine residents' and that the city 'continues to be a model new community.' As chairman, Bren remains the ultimate decision-maker at Irvine Co. He's tan, athletic, 'forceful and confident,' says James Doti, the former president of Chapman University, a private liberal arts school in the city of Orange. 'He speaks. You listen.' Bren comes into the office every day, where he works on the ninth floor, at a desk overlooking the Fashion Island shopping center (which he owns) and, farther in the distance, the exclusive Harbor Island (an artificial island where he has a mansion). He's been known to sign off on construction documents and profit and loss statements by hand. It's the kind of top-down control one might expect from a billionaire-run planned utopia, such as former Victoria's Secret & Co. Chief Executive Officer Les Wexner 's model heartland town in Ohio or Oracle Corp. Chairman Larry Ellison 's privately owned Hawaiian island. But those other master-planned communities are dwarfed by Irvine's size, longevity and diversity. Irvine has attracted a mix of academics, immigrants and entrepreneurs, fueling ' the hottest housing market ' in the nation, as the Los Angeles Times proclaimed last August, and making it one of America's most enviable urban-planning experiments. (In the wake of the Los Angeles fires, its meticulous fire emergency planning has also been heralded as a model for other cities.) Sixty years after Irvine Co. transformed its historic ownership of a sprawling plot of farmland, Irvine has become a thriving city of more than 300,000 residents and about 450,000 jobs. It's home to major tech companies, including game maker Blizzard Entertainment Inc. and electric-vehicle upstart Rivian Automotive Inc., and the prestigious University of California at Irvine, famous for its breakthroughs in chemistry, climate research and computer science (in the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences). High-earning tech workers and executives have flocked there for its good schools, low crime rates and racial diversity. Noodle shops and Middle Eastern grocery stores dot the city's strip malls. It's Los Angeles, but without all the fuss. Bren is now 92 and has no announced successor. Few know what will happen when the person who planned Irvine down to all those fine details is gone. But one thing they can expect is that the one-man HOA has not left the future of his city to chance. Irvine is so meticulously planned that it can be easy to forget what it lacks. Graffiti is rare and swiftly removed. The streets are incessantly clean. There are no cannabis shops, no cemeteries and almost no above-ground cables; you know you've left the city when you start to see telephone poles. Hundreds of surveillance cameras operated by law enforcement watch public spaces; the police department's Tesla Cybertrucks patrol the roads. Many of the city's residential neighborhoods are laid out in concentric circles. Lisa Alvarez, a professor at Irvine Valley College, says that even after almost 30 years of teaching in Irvine, she still finds herself getting lost driving. Once in a while she'll make a turn, and 'there's this very spooky feeling, like, 'Oh my gosh, where am I now?'' she says. 'Because it all looks the same.' Once you're aware of Irvine Co.'s grip on the city, you notice traces of it everywhere. The company's red logo—a 'sunwave,' which, Irvine Co. explains in a Facebook post, was 'designed to resemble a combination of the sun and ocean waves'—is spotted everywhere. At the Woodbridge Village Center, a small shopping mall flanked by two artificial lakes, a digital sign encourages passersby to follow Irvine Co. on Instagram. When users log on to the city's public Wi-Fi, paid for by Irvine Co., the company's website pops up. A few miles away, at the Irvine Spectrum Center—an open-air mall owned by Irvine Co. that boasts an Apple Store, a Capital One Café, a giant Ferris wheel and a relentless stream of piped-in pop music—a sign advertises an Irvine Co.-developed shopping app called Retail Therapy. The app offers daily discounts at businesses that rent from Irvine Co.-owned properties, including a $100 welcome bonus for becoming a member of the local credit union. Local businesses face stiff terms from the company. A lawyer who works on commercial lease negotiations in the city says the standard Irvine Co. contract for businesses typically has three tiers of payment. In addition to the normal base rent and the cost of upkeep, Irvine Co. also asks for a cut of the tenant's revenue. Irvine residents remember local businesses—the ice cream shop Stricklands or the halal restaurant Kochee Kabob House—that have disappeared because Irvine Co. chose not to renew their leases. (Irvine Co. does not dispute this but says that 'unfortunately, customer tastes and preferences sometimes shift over time and these changes can lead to a limited number of closures.') Diana Waer, who's lived in Irvine since the 1970s, says she misses her favorite diner and other restaurants that have been replaced by designer cafes. 'People don't want to pay $25 for bacon and eggs,' she says. Still, she loves her city—the sun, the nearby sand and the safety. 'You couldn't pay me to live anywhere else.' Siblings Kevin and Stephanie Lin left Irvine after high school, moving away for college and work, only to return home. 'Growing up here, my friends would call it 'the bubble,'' says Kevin, who opened a women's clothing boutique with his sister at the Spectrum mall in 2019. 'I recommend kids get out and explore, but now we appreciate it because we've been away.' The Lins' parents, immigrants from Taiwan who moved to Irvine almost 30 years ago, were part of a broader migration of Asians drawn by the strong public schools. 'Real estate agents started to advertise in Asia,' says Linda Trinh Vo, a professor of Asian American Studies at UC Irvine. 'So if you were trying to migrate from Korea or Taiwan, even mainland China, Irvine is on the map.' Today, Asian Americans make up 44% of Irvine's population. (The strip malls popular among Asian American residents, such as Diamond Jamboree Shopping Center, are some the few not owned by Irvine Co.) Kevin and Stephanie say they'd never given much thought to the idea that most of Irvine was owned by one company, including both the apartment and the retail space they rent. If anything, they appreciate the centrally planned, controlled nature of the city. The siblings share an apartment in the Promenade, a new Irvine Co.-owned resort-like complex with red-tile-roofed units, arched doorways in Bren's favored Palladian villa style and glimmering pools. Stephanie experimented with other places—she went to Parsons School of Design in New York and lived in London and Germany—but none seemed to top her hometown. 'I have no foreseeable plans,' she says, 'to leave Irvine.' The story of Irvine began two centuries ago when James Irvine left Ireland during the potato famine and ended up in San Francisco during the gold rush. He successfully opened a grocery store and used the profits to purchase a 110,000-acre sheep ranch outside Los Angeles, roughly the size of today's Denver. In 1894, Irvine's son incorporated Irvine Co. to manage the family landholdings. Modern Orange County eventually sprung up around the Irvine Ranch, and the county's population grew from about 13,000 in 1890 to 700,000 in 1960. Control of the ranch ultimately landed with James' grandson Myford Irvine, who decided to develop the land into a city. But before he got started, he died in his basement in 1959 from a shotgun wound to the stomach and two pistol wounds to the head. (Officially it was ruled a suicide, though several Irvine family members raised the possibility of more nefarious activity.) On the day of his funeral, Irvine Co. convened an emergency meeting to decide who'd take over; the successor was a longtime board member who accelerated the plans to hatch a city. At the time, the Associated Press called it 'potentially the most valuable piece of land under single ownership in the world.' To attract residents, the company gifted a 1,000-acre plot of land to the state of California in exchange for the choice of location for its new campus, UC Irvine. To design the city, Irvine Co. hired architect William Pereira, who got his start designing sets for Paramount Pictures, and an idealistic urban planner named Ray Watson, who became the chairman of Walt Disney Productions in the 1980s. (Watson had first entered the Disney orbit earlier, when Walt Disney, a fan of the Irvine plan, had consulted Watson as he developed Disney World.) They built the city around a series of neighborhoods, dubbed 'villages,' each one a large community of single-family homes, plus a series of apartment buildings and its own shopping centers. It was a novel, more community-centric approach to the suburban sprawl taking over the rest of the country. Sharon Toji, who moved from Oregon to Irvine with her husband and kids in 1966, settled in University Park, the city's first residential village. She bought her home, a town-house-style building that shared a driveway with her next-door neighbors, for $25,000. All the homes opened onto a shared park space where kids played on swing sets and bored teens played cards or smoked weed. Toji attended Easter egg hunts, potlucks, movie screenings, swim meets. Local parents split up child-care duties, and the neighborhood school adopted a 'team teaching' approach, where first, second and third graders were taught in a big group together. Toji and her neighbors felt they were building something different from the rest of buttoned-up Orange County. Toji agitated her community's corporate overlord when necessary. Once, she asked an Irvine Co. executive for better playground equipment for the neighborhood. When he turned her down, she reminded him that he was hosting an open house in a few days to promote new housing developments. She told the executive that she and her neighbors would be there, kids in their strollers, clutching signs that read, 'Irvine Company does not care about your children's playground equipment.' Toji recalls, 'He said, 'Would you really do that?' And I said, 'You bet your life I would.'' A day later the company sent her a budget. Despite those small compromises, Irvine Co. held tight to its power. When the company created new neighborhoods—Woodbridge, Turtle Rock, Northwood—its executives set up homeowners associations, which were in vogue across America at the time, and trained the new leadership. Irvine Co. gave these HOA leaders a handbook, complete with company recommendations for how the houses in each neighborhood should be maintained. The village bylaws barred cars from parking in driveways and required garage doors to be closed. They also dictated the shades of beige exterior paint and the proper heights of fences. In 1971, Irvine residents voted to incorporate as a city, meaning they'd be able to elect a mayor and a city council independent of the company. The city now had to sign off on all new Irvine Co. developments. But at the first city council meeting, an official made a telling slip: 'May I call this official meeting of the city council of the Irvine Co. to order, please?' Just as Irvine Co. was erecting its new city, a little-known developer began building homes of his own nearby in Orange County. The son of high-powered Hollywood producer Milton Bren, Donald Bren grew up in a house filled with servants; he spent his summers sailing and winters skiing. In the late 1950s, Bren built his first homes in the area, thanks to a loan from his father's second wife, Claire Trevor, an actress who starred in films alongside John Wayne. A few years later, Bren bought 4,000 acres just to the south of Irvine, where he began building a new city, Mission Viejo. His attention, however, was increasingly on the growing city to the north. In 1977 he joined a group of investors that bought Irvine Co. for $337 million; within six years, Bren had purchased enough stock to hold an 86% stake, wresting control of Irvine Co. from his partners. Under Bren, home designs became flashier than in the original plan, reflecting his own taste. Irvine Co. also began expanding beyond Orange County. His portfolio now includes tracts of commercial and residential properties in San Diego, Los Angeles, Silicon Valley and Chicago. In 2015 the company was revealed as the owner of the MetLife Building in New York. The National Multifamily Housing Council ranked Irvine Co. as the 12th-largest apartment owner in America in 2022. In addition to its properties, it owns 800 acres of avocado groves north of Irvine, making it one of the top avocado producers in the US. (Half of the original Irvine Ranch is also set aside permanently from development, preserved in perpetuity as wildlands, one of Bren's proudest achievements, according to the Donald Bren Foundation.) Within the walls of Irvine Co., Bren is known as well mannered and scrupulous, though employees and associates say he's not much of a people person. Top executives, who requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak on behalf of the company, advise others not to use any adjectives when they report to him, since they say he wants only the raw facts. A former employee says every presentation needs to be in his preferred format: 10-point Arial typeface, with consistent margins. According to another former employee, when Bren visited an apartment complex that Irvine Co. had opened in Santa Clara, California, he informed the leasing manager that he didn't like the building's exterior, and he wanted the cypress trees and birds of paradise plants lining the front walkway arranged in a different order. By the following morning, the person says, the hedges and pavers had been ripped out and completely remodeled. (Irvine Co. says the adjectives, the presentation requirements and the Santa Clara incident are not accurate.) In a Los Angeles Magazine article from 1984, Bren's top aide, Gary Hunt, said his boss wired his conference room 'with devices that thwart all recording equipment.' (Hunt, who worked for Irvine Co. for 25 years and is currently the vice chairman of a California public-affairs company, now says he never said that.) Bren's personal staffers—cooks, maids, drivers—have had to sign an agreement swearing them to confidentiality regarding any 'financial, business, medical, legal, personal and contractual matters of or pertaining to' Bren, 'his family, friends, associates and other employees of Employer,' noting that violators may have to pay a $50,000 penalty and face a threat of litigation, according to a 2004 report in OC Weekly. (Irvine Co. disputes this characterization.) In 2006, when an ex-lover sued Bren for failing to pay what she alleged was adequate child support for two children he fathered out of wedlock, Bren persuaded the court to block her requests for information, including his estate plan and income, citing his right to privacy, a ruling upheld on appeal. Whereas some real estate barons might do anything to climb the rankings of billionaires lists, Bren had the equivalent of a full-time staff trying to keep his money quiet, says a former executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of concerns about retaliation. It's no wonder OC Weekly once voted him Orange County's most mysterious celebrity. Even Farrah Khan, Irvine's mayor from 2020 to 2024, has never met Bren. She says she came close only once, around 2019, when she was a city councilwoman: She was waiting on the ground floor of the Irvine Co. offices and was told to clear out of the way. Bren was arriving to work, and he wanted to take the elevator up alone. 'It was really surprising to me that everyone had to be ushered out of the lobby so he could go up to his office,' Khan says. 'That's as close as I've ever gotten to him.' If there's a plan for what happens to Irvine Co. after Bren, few people inside the company know what it is. Many of the executives who appear to be front-runners for the top job eventually wake up to find themselves out of favor or burned out. Or, as one former executive who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation put it, senior leaders go to work knowing 'someday the end would come, and he [Bren] would find a better shiny penny.' Dan Young, a former mayor of Santa Ana once viewed as Bren's likely successor, stepped down as head of homebuilding in 2016 after 16 years at the company. (Young declined to comment, citing an NDA.) The only executive to hold the title of CEO at Irvine Co. was Mike McKee, who left the company almost two decades ago, in 2008. Asked about the future of Irvine after Bren, the former chief executive says, 'I know what he plans, I was involved in it'—but he won't reveal more than that. Instead of naming another CEO after McKee's departure, Bren appointed a four-member executive management committee made up of the company's president, chief operating officer, chief financial officer and group president of commercial properties, all potential candidates to lead the company after his departure. Some of Bren's family may also stay involved, including his wife, Brigitte, a former entertainment attorney. Hunter Bren, the son of Donald and Brigitte, identified himself as an Irvine Co. 'executive apprentice' for a 2023 MBA program at Pepperdine University. Another son, Cary Bren, a former race-car driver, once operated California Pacific Homes, a homebuilder closely associated with Irvine Co. It's not clear whether they, or any of Bren's other children, have a shot at the top job. Within Bren's inner circle, the question of succession can be touchy. 'Rumors are he's going to live to be about 220,' says Larry Webb, who for three decades worked for homebuilders contracted by Irvine Co. 'So any discussion might be moot.' These days, Irvine Co. is warming up to more dense housing, such as the Promenade, the new resort-style campus with 2,000 apartments, where the Lin siblings live. And other developers are cribbing from Bren's formula on his turf: an affiliate of Lennar Corp. is building its own Irvine Co.-style mini-utopia. The Great Park Neighborhoods, built on a former airfield in Irvine city limits, will feature 10,000-plus homes—single-family residences starting at $1 million—along with nature trails, schools, a hospital and a college campus. Meanwhile, Irvine Co. is also running out of space. 'There's still more land to build but not the decades-long runway they had,' says Scott Wild, a senior vice president at John Burns Research & Consulting, a housing market advisory company in Irvine. Perhaps Bren's greatest legacy will be that living in Irvine has come to represent a pinnacle of upper-middle class achievement, with few others able to afford to live there anymore. It's the third-most expensive city for rentals in Southern California, with an average gross rent of $2,771. From 2000 to 2022, the homeownership rate fell from 60% to 44%. As mayor, Khan pushed for more multifamily housing, to some success. In October the city cleared the way for the development of 15,000 new housing units near John Wayne Airport, mostly on land Irvine Co. sold decades ago. But even now, everyone knows there's a limit to the city's power to ensure the housing is affordable, at least without Irvine Co.'s—and Bren's—endorsement. 'Because they are a majority owner of rental properties here, they dictate what rents would look like,' Khan says, noting that some of her ideas, such as converting apartments to more affordable condos, 'didn't go too well' after she raised them with the company. In late 2024, Larry Agran became Irvine's new mayor. Over the years, Agran, a long-serving councilman and self-described progressive who'd accused the Irvine Co. of 'monopoly control of the land,' has watched the company amass that power. When he first ran for city council in 1978, he says, it was obvious who on the council was 'controlled by the company' and who wasn't. In one early proposal he attempted to limit future rent increases in Irvine, a move aimed squarely at the city's only sizable landlord. The proposal never passed. This time, Agran is taking a less combative approach that doesn't involve legislation. To get Bren's company on board with his plan to create more affordable housing, he wants to persuade them to slash the rents on 5,000 existing apartment units. In exchange, he'll reduce the affordability requirements on some of the '15,000 units or so' that Irvine Co. still needs the city to approve. It's a far less radical tactic than his proposals from decades past. But 'the likelihood of success,' Agran concedes, 'is much better just entering into a deal with the Irvine Co.' More On Bloomberg
