Irvine Company
Irvine Company headquarters in Newport Center
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| Private | |
| Industry |
Real estate Community development Property investment Urban planning Urban design |
| Founded | 1864 |
| Headquarters | Newport Beach, California, United States of America |
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Number of locations
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Chicago, New York City, Los Angeles County, Orange County, San Diego County, Silicon Valley |
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Area served
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California |
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Key people
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James Irvine (Founder) Donald Bren (Chairman) |
| Website | www |
The Irvine Company is an American private company focused on real estate development. It is headquartered in Newport Center, California, with a large portion of its operations centered in and around Irvine, California, a planned city of 250,000 people mainly designed by the Irvine Company. The company was founded by the Irvine family and is currently wholly owned by Donald Bren. Since the company is private, its financials are not released to the public. However, Donald Bren is the richest real estate developer in the United States, valued at $15.2 billion.
The Irvine Company grew from the premise of a 185-square-mile (480 km2) ranch founded by James Irvine I,Benjamin and Thomas Flint, and Llewellyn Bixby in 1864 from three adjoining Mexican land grants. Irvine and his partners began by purchasing the Rancho San Joaquin, which constitutes the coastal half of the present-day ranch, from Jose Antonio Sepulveda. A drought that killed his livestock forced Sepulveda to sell his ranch in 1864. The partners purchased Rancho Lomas de Santiago—largely unfarmable due to its steep, hilly terrain—in 1866 from William Wolfskill, who had used it largely as a sheep ranch. Flint, Bixby and Irvine were among the claimants of a title lawsuit that divided Rancho Santiago de Santa Ana in 1868. Unlike other early Newport Beach landowners, Irvine and his partners had no interest in subdividing and selling, intent, instead, upon identifying the most lucrative agricultural uses for their enormous tract of land, spanning over 100,000 acres. Irish-born Irvine met Collis Huntington, soon to become one of the Central Pacific Railroad (CPR) magnates on the trip across the Atlantic. Rather than cementing a friendship, a disagreement that lasted throughout their lives resulted. When Huntington's Southern Pacific Railroad (SP) needed Irvine's land for its route between Orange County and San Diego, Irvine refused. When SP crews began laying tracks on Irvine land without permission, ranch hands with shotguns confronted the crews. Eventually, Irvine gave the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway permission to build on his ranch. (The ATSF's successor, the BNSF Railway, still operates freight trains on the line, along with Amtrak's Pacific Surfliner and Metrolink's Orange County Line commuter train)
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Wikipedia