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Houston Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta made his biggest local splash in 2022 when he paid $650 million for the Montage Laguna Beach, but the Texas billionaire’s deal-making has involved others in the area, as a recent meal at Fashion Island’s Ocean 48 highlighted.
The upscale steakhouse and seafood restaurant was started by Jeff and Mike Mastro, co-founders of the Mastro’s restaurant chain, which they sold in 2007 to a private equity firm. That PE firm in turn sold those chains in 2013 to Houston-based Landry’s, the 600+ restaurant chain (with over a dozen OC locations) that is owned by Fertitta.
The Mastro duo opened Ocean 48 last year (under their Prime Steak Concepts umbrella), at the site of the former Fig & Olive, and the spot has already made local waves; when we asked members of last year’s OC500 Directory of Influence to name their favorite new local restaurant, it got the most mentions.
Business Journal Publisher Richard Reisman and I recently joined Prime Steak Chief Brand Officer Oliver Badgio for a dinner with two winners of our recent Excellence in Entrepreneurship Awards, Westcliff University President and CEO Anthony Lee and TrafFix Devices President and CEO Brent Kulp, as well as Bill Shopoff, founder of Irvine’s Shopoff Realty Investments and the keynote speaker of last month’s EiE Awards event.
The ribeye and grilled octopus get high recommendations.
The best deals are often the ones you don’t make, Bill Shopoff noted during our meal.
When the upscale 5000 Birch office tower complex in Newport Beach sold in 2015, Shopoff Realty Investments was outbid for the property by John Hancock Real Estate, which paid a reported $104.5 million, or over $335 per square foot for the two-building complex.
This April, local exec Joe Wen took 5000 Birch off John Hancock’s hands for a fraction of that price: just $33 million, or $106 per square foot.
The two office buildings sit a block away from the new UCI Health Irvine Hospital, whose Advanced Care facility is backed by the Wen family, as well as the sprawling One Uptown Newport housing development along Jamboree Road that’s been spearheaded by Shopoff.
Jeff Moorad and his MSP Sports Capital have gained international acclaim due to the success of McLaren Racing; see Peter J. Brennan’s front-page feature for more on the F1 team. MSP also counts investments in several international soccer clubs and also is owner of the X Games extreme sports brand.
X Games officials last week announced they’d be postponing an upcoming multi-day summer event in Sacramento, to “allow the league to remain 100% focused on the summer 2026 launch of the X Games League,” which they call “a groundbreaking global competition platform that will usher in a new era for action sports.”