Top 30 richest Americans
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Forbes.com, September 22, 2011
Donald Bren
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California real estate developer Donald Bren sits atop a mostly thriving mix of residential and commercial properties as the head of the Irvine Company. It purchased several properties within the past year, including the Hyatt Center office building in Chicago, which it bought from the Pritzker family for a reported $625 million. Irvine Co. has created a homebuilding unit that sold some 1500 new homes since January 2010. It's also building the new headquarters for bond fund manager PIMCO in Newport Beach. The Irvine Co. portfolio includes 480 office properties, 125 apartment communities with roughly 44,000 units, 41 shopping centers, three hotels, three golf clubs and five marinas. Bren has set aside more than 50,000 acres of the original 93,000-acre Irvine Ranch as permanent open space, including a 20,000 acre gift in June 2010 to Orange County. Bren attended U. of Washington on a skiing scholarship. He joined the Marines, then built his first house with a $10,000 loan in 1958. He planned the 10,000-acre Rancho Mission Viejo in California. With partners, he bought the 145-year-old real estate master planner and developer Irvine Co. for $337 million in1977 and became the firm's sole shareholder in 1996. It has developed much of central Orange County, Irvine and half of Newport Beach. His philanthropy includes donations to U.C. Irvine and UC Santa Barbara as well as to K-12 schools in Irvine.
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