Damon Estate The Samuel Mills Damon Estate may sell its 121,000 acres in Hawaii, including land granted the banker by Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop in the 1880s, to raise money for the estate's heirs, property brokers said.
may sell land
Proposals for shopping its
121,000 acres in Hawaii are due
from brokers by month's endBy Elizabeth Hayes
Bloomberg NewsTrustees for Damon, whose property is worth as much as $400 million, have set a deadline of July 31 for proposals from brokers, said people who received the request.
The Damon Estate is among a group of large, private landowners with assets dating to the 19th century that are seeking cash to distribute to aging beneficiaries. Another big Hawaiian estate selling property is that of James Campbell, a Scottish seaman who started a sugar business on Maui in 1860.
"There's some real core commercial property," Carroll Taylor, a lawyer for one of the 20 Damon beneficiaries, said of some of Damon's Honolulu area assets. "It's not going to be in tourist brochures, but it's very important."
Taylor said he had no knowledge of the estate asking brokers for proposals, though he said Goldman Sachs Group Inc. has been advising the trustees.
Tim Johns, Damon Estate's chief operating officer, said he couldn't comment at the request of the trustees. A Goldman Sachs spokeswoman, Andrea Raphael, declined to comment.
The Damon Estate was created in 1924 upon the death of Damon, a son of missionaries who was an early partner in First Hawaiian Bank.
Damon's estate, which also owns agricultural land in northern California, has 3,900 acres on Oahu, part of an ahupuaa bequeathed to Damon by Bishop.
In 1958, the estate bought the 17,000-acre Kahuku Ranch, consisting of pastureland for cattle grazing and koa forest at the southern tip of the Big Island adjacent to Volcanoes National Park. Damon's other holdings include 235 acres near Honolulu International Airport leased to warehouses, car dealerships, lumberyards and mechanic shops.
A sale was set in motion in 1994, when the Hawaii Supreme Court ruled the estate would terminate upon the death of the last of Damon's grandchildren. That resolved a dispute among the heirs, some of whom argued the estate shouldn't terminate for another 21 years. Three of Damon's grandchildren are alive and in their 80s.
"It's an uncertain date of termination, but it's getting closer," said Taylor, who wouldn't identify his client. The estate is "aggressively looking at options. I'm sure it isn't going to be a fire sale. They have no interest in dumping their land."
Besides Damon and Campbell, other Hawaiian landholders selling land after more than a century include C. Brewer & Co., the oldest company west of Denver and one of the original Big Five sugar and pineapple growers. Brewer is selling its 75,000 acres of land on the Big Island and Maui after 140 years of ownership.
Brewer is liquidating because many of its shareholders are elderly, said Alan Kugle, head of Brewer's real estate. Otherwise, the company wouldn't be in the market now, given the weakness of the economies of Japan and California, he said.
"If we were to pick a time that was perfect, we wouldn't have picked this time," Kugle said. Ten years ago, he said, "the Japanese bought a tremendous amount of real estate in Hawaii at high prices."
Brewer has sold 11,000 acres for $40 million and agreed to sell another 8,600 acres for $43 million in the year since the property first went on the market Buyers include small farmers, residential developers and cattle operations, he said. AOL Time Warner Chairman Stephen Case, who has a controlling interest in Maui Land & Pineapple co., decided not to buy after expressing interest, Kugle said.