Former President Donald Trump has figured in his share of lawsuits, the most recent one playing out this week in a Delaware courtroom where a voting machine company ultimately settled with Fox News, which it claimed spread misinformation about the 2020 election. While Trump did not have the starring role, he was certainly a featured player.
Closer to home, a number of prospective condominium buyers from Southern California — including many San Diegans — sued Trump more than a decade ago over a failed condominium project in Baja California.
Trump at the time tried to downplay his role in the real esate offering, even though his daughter Ivanka wined and dined potential investors at the Manchester Grand Hyatt.
The legal dispute revolved around 17 acres of prime Pacific coast real estate in Punta Bandera just south of Tijuana. It was to be the location for the Trump Ocean Resort. In a sales promo for the resort, the former president encouraged people to invest, saying “Baja is one of the really hot places.”
And daughter Ivanka talked about how her father and his company “are always ahead of the curve.” It was projected to open in 2009. You can still find the promotional videos for the Trump Ocean Resort on YouTube.
Trump’s reputation at that time was that of a successful wheeler dealer, as he brags in sales promotions. “When I build I have investors that follow me,” he would say.
And more than 250 investors did follow, some of whom were videotaped at a “VIP event” where they are extolling Trump. “His reputation is synonymous with quality,” said one woman, and another couple added, “We figured we can’t go wrong.”
But something did go wrong.
The planned 26-story building overlooking the Pacific Ocean never got off the ground. Trump would at first claim he simply licensed his name for the deal but later agreed to a confidential settlement with some investors.
Apparently his role was more than he claimed. In a 2006 article, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported that Trump had told one of the reporters in an interview that he was a “significant” equity investor in the project.
A visit last week to the Baja California property revealed apparently nothing has been done to the site. While walking nearby, two unidentified men appeared and escorted two reporters out of the area. They explained they worked for the property owner, had seen us on video, and didn’t want us going on the property. Neither would identify themselves or the property owner.
The only other activity we saw was a group of well-kept dogs that roamed the acreage. We later learned the land is currently controlled by Pacifica Group based in Newport Beach. The company, which had no relationship with the Trump Ocean Resort, did not respond to our requests for comment.
One Trump Ocean Resort investor, Sandra Sapol, is the owner of a small business in Encinitas, and she is still very angry about spending $130,000 on promises she said Trump’s promotions made.
She met Ivanka Trump at a sales presentation in downtown San Diego. She remembers how excited her family was when they thought about what was to come. They would travel to the site frequently but “all of a sudden, the offices were closed, and all of a sudden, the fences went up. And all of a sudden, we weren’t getting phone calls back from the Trump Baja property.”
Since then she has on occasion stopped by the property, which is right off the Rosarito toll road, and laments that “unfortunately, it never amounted to much more than just a hole in the wall, a hole in the ground.”
Sapol says she never got a dime back, nothing that when attorneys called to get her to join in a class-action lawsuit, her husband refused to spend any more money on the doomed deal. Multiple media accounts report more than $32 million was raised for the project and spent before any work was done.
The investors who sued only got back $7.25 million from a co-developer of the project with Trump. There was also a confidential settlement with Trump covering about 100 investors.
A brief attempt was made to put a senior retirement community on the property, but it never gained traction. So the property now sits vacant, the only sound of life the pounding surf and dogs barking, racing across the beautiful shoreline.