Resort Has Had Ups and Downs Since Its More Prestigious Days

To be a Kona Kai Club member during the resort’s prime was to have climbed the ladder of success in the carefree days of San Diego’s 1950s and early 1960s.

Financial kingpin C. Arnholt Smith built the ranch-style resort and tennis club to suit himself and his friends. Hollywood celebrities, including Charlton Heston and Jerry Lewis, were regulars at the club’s cabanas and bay-front apartments and it was a thing of status to be a member or to be the guest of one.

Smith sold the facility in the mid-1960s to business associate John Alessio. Alessio sold it to Hollywood producer Jack Wrather, who proved an unsuccessful owner-operator.

Alessio bought the club back from Wrather, later selling it to the Lipin brothers, William, Harold and Lou.

It was Lou Lipin who introduced Alessio to his brothers, recalled Ben Press, the former tennis pro at the Kona Kai. Press is now the head tennis pro and vice president of sports activity at the Hotel del Coronado.

Lipin was the middle man because he was an executive with Smith’s fraud-ridden U.S. National Bank before it collapsed in 1973.

Trying for 5 Years

The Lipins have been trying to sell the Kona Kai property for at least five years, with a handful of deals falling out of escrow.

They are, to be sure, tough negotiators. For example, a $250,000 non-refundable deposit was required of would-be buyers before the brothers even allowed them to examine the Kona Kai’s books and records.

And the Lipins also wanted, as a condition of any purchase, to be allowed to live and eat free at the Kona Kai, according to real estate industry sources.

The new owners, Bill DeLeeuw and Dale Rorabaugh, want to “turn the club around and make it like it was in the late ‘50s,” according to DeLeeuw. “It’s got the location--there’s no better piece of real estate in San Diego.”

Although they’ve run into controversy, their strategy is paying off: Occupancy in June averaged 93% compared to only 55% a year earlier.

In charge of day-to-day operations of the Kona Kai are Ed Shaw and Carl Winston, two former executives of the Laventhol & Horwath accountancy firm.