2024-08-15 14:45:19
Red Rock Island, the only private island in San Francisco Bay, is not particularly inviting. While the rugged red rock offers views of Northern California’s luxury enclave of Belvedere Island and the San Francisco skyline, it’s also within earshot of the Richmond Bridge, which more than 80,000 vehicles cross daily. Instead of a sandy beach, the island of almost 2.5 hectares offers pebbles. There are no power lines or gas connections, but there are several cables.
“Red Rock is a bit of an ugly island,” one former owner, gem dealer David Glickman, admitted in 2007. It’s still not good enough as a retreat for a wealthy buyer. “It’s not your typical island with palm trees,” he told National Radio at the time. Glickman bought Red Rock on a whim in the mid-1960s for just under $50,000. A lawyer with unusual real estate plans to remove a part from the approximately 60 high rock and build on it. Today no one knows why your plans for a studio, residential complex or a hotel fell through.
Durning camped on the island with his children
Glickman eventually moved to Thailand to trade in diamonds. He left Red Rock Island to his California business partner Mack Durning, who camped there with his children in the summer. The now deceased businessman offered the island for sale for years without success. Now his son Brock is trying to sell the private island of the United States of America – for $ 25 million.
“I love challenges,” Christopher Lim, a broker at Christie’s International in San Francisco, told CBS. On behalf of Durning, who has lived in Alaska for years, he has been looking for a buyer for Red Rock Island since the winter. After several visits from interested parties from New York and Miami, Lim has reportedly found a potential buyer. According to real estate website Zillow, he has been negotiating the details of the sale since mid-July. His future is a mystery, as is what he plans to do with Red Rock. In any case, you need luck and money more than your predecessors.
The island’s first known resident, former California Senator Selim Woodworth, son of author Samuel Woodworth, tried in vain to register as an owner in the mid-19th century. The United States government rejected his request under the Homestead Act: whether the country would be protected from Red Rock Island in the event of war. Mine shafts were then drilled into the rock to extract manganese.
Many plans for the island fell through
100 years ago, the police chief of San Francisco, Arthur Riehl, registered as the first owner of the island. When his hopes for valuable minerals were dashed, the family left the island to real estate investor Alex Wilson in 1948. He, too, did not pass on ideas. His plans for a wedding chapel, a boat and a helipad fell through.
Before Wilson’s son and a partner could rent Red Rock Island as a site for large billboards, Glickman bought the rock in 1964 and gave it to his friend Durning before he left for Bangkok. Almost 20 years later, the businessman approached him to sell it to people he knew well. Bhagwan Shree Rajnesh, the founder of the cult named after him, also known as the sex guru, wanted to move from Oregon to the rock with his followers in 1985. Before they signed the purchase agreement, ” Bhagwan” was expelled from the United States.
Durning Brock’s son’s first attempt to sell a private island in San Francisco Bay also failed in 2015. When there was no buyer for ten million dollars, the family reduced the price by half. However, a buyer like Oracle founder Larry Ellison, who owns around 98 percent of the Hawaiian island of Lanai, doesn’t see it. The situation is said to have attracted many interested parties. The rock is of three regions. The possible future owner, with whom real estate agent Lim is currently negotiating, will need not only $25 million but also a lot of patience to negotiate with the authorities in Marin, Contra Costa and San Francisco counties before you have to build on the property.
#Private #island #San #Francisco #buyers