Keen Interest Reported in Hunt Resort Parcel

The 9-year legal and environmental battle over the Hunt brothers’ Pacific Rim Country Club and Resort in Carlsbad was recently concluded, but the wheeling and dealing has just begun.

Owners Herbert and Bunker Hunt are now trying to sell the 1,000-acre site’s pivotal piece of property: a 27.5-acre resort parcel that is to be the site of a 560-acre hotel. The buyer of the resort tract is also being asked to pay for the property’s 18-hole, Arnold Palmer-designed golf course, project spokesman Larry Clemens said Monday.

Interest in the resort site among possible buyers is intense with about six buyers seriously eyeballing the property, Clemens said. Those potential buyers, whose identities Clemens did not divulge, include one keenly interested Japanese investor.

Decision Within 2 Months

Clemens said the Hunts will choose a buyer for the resort property within two months, a decision the Hunts regard with utmost importance since the resort will largely define the character of the “world class� project, Clemens said.

The Hunts have carved up their property into 30 pieces, Clemens said, that they will sell off, mainly to housing developers, by bits, pieces and chunks. Eventually, the Hunts will sell off their entire ownership interest in the property with which they have become so closely identified. The Hunts bought the property in 1979.

Pacific Rim will ultimately accommodate 2,836 housing units, about 1,500 of which will be built in a first phase, which will commence in one year, Clemens said. No housing will be completed and for sale until 1990, he said.

The Hunts were given final approval April 14 by the California Coastal Commission to develop their $1-billion resort-housing complex north of Batiquitos Lagoon. They will begin grading the site June 1. By mid-July, construction will have begun on the Alga Road arterial connecting El Camino Real with Poinsettia Lane and on the back nine holes of the golf course.