Up from Sudan

Speculation abounds about whether or not John Moores will have to unload at least a part of his San Diego Padres baseball team in order to come up with enough scratch for a multimillion-dollar divorce settlement. Meanwhile, his soon-to-be-ex-wife Becky has gone on a real estate buying binge in a downscale part of East San Diego. On August 26, county records show, Mrs. Moores snapped up four small condos in the Santa Fe Terrace complex near the corner of Fairmount and Home Avenues. The average cost of each was about $150,000, nothing to compete with the sprawling Moores estate in Rancho Santa Fe where the couple used to cohabit. Among other interests of Mrs. Moores is helping African immigrants adjust to life in America. According to a May 2007 filing with the Internal Revenue Service, the Moores Foundation for New Americans was set up two years ago with the objective of educating Sudanese refugees. Through the middle of 2006, Moores had given it $100,000; her daughter Jennifer contributed $50,000. ... La Jolla’s Blue Brothers have lost the final round in their years-long battle with the citizenry of Telluride, Colorado, where the brothers wanted to build a residential and shopping complex on 570 acres of the pristine valley floor. Linden and Neal Blue’s San Miguel Valley Corporation lost its legal battle against the town’s condemnation suit in June; they were paid $50 million for the property. But the brothers wanted the taxpayers to ante up an additional $527,000 in legal fees incurred during the brothers’ failed appeal. Earlier this month, an appeals court turned them down.