Desert of the heart

There’s been another development in the slow but steady liquidation of the newspaper holding company of late Union-Tribune owner Helen Copley. Last week Copley Press quietly recorded a document giving GP Associates LLC, run by Gregory Perlman of Sherman Oaks, the right to buy 71 acres that Copley owns in the desert near Borrego Springs. The memorandum of option, said to last two years beginning on December 27 of last year, provides no details as to the price of the deal. Just before the end of last year Copley sold La Casa del Zorro resort in Borrego to GH Capital, another Perlman venture, which had previously bought the bankrupt Rams Hill subdivision. It’s now called Montesoro. … One semi-humorous rumor making the rounds at the U-T has the McKinnon clan, proprietors of KUSI and San Diego Home/Garden Lifestyles magazine, taking control of the newspaper in a partnership in which David Copley surrenders majority control; a new regulation adopted by the Federal Communications Commission late last year allows an owner to hold both a newspaper and a television station in the same city, making the imagined deal possible, if not all that probable. … During the first 11 days of this year, there have been 979 foreclosure sales in San Diego County, compared with 727 during the same time last year, according to figures from the County Recorder’s Office. Not surprisingly, the records show that some of the loans gone bad were owned by big Wall Street firms, including Lehman Brothers (3) and Bear Stearns (9), both enmeshed in the subprime debacle. But taking a bigger hit was Germany’s Deutsche Bank, with a grand total of 38. Another noted subprime player, Britain’s HSBC, was forced to take back 5 pieces of local real estate during the same period.