While the Town of Mammoth Lakes awaits its fate over the $30 million Hot Creek court judgment, some have begun to ask, Who is Hot Creek or Mammoth Lakes Land Acquisition as the company is identified on the lawsuit?

The Land Company originally known as Hot Creek is now made up of a number of high-powered investors. They apparently saw the proposed condo project at Mammoth Airport as a winner. Instead, the project struggled under continued delays, mostly due to the FAA problems with such a project on airport land. The jury recently agreed that the Town broke its deal with Hot Creek.

One of the major investors in this current group is Raleigh Enterprises of Santa Monica, described as “a group of closely managed business operations headquartered in Santa Monica. Raleigh includes a sizeable portfolio of real estate, hotels, and retail businesses like Lee Brevard Jewelry, Entourage LA, File Keepers and Hollywood Rentals Production Services, even a winery and Raleigh Studios of Hollywood and Manhattan Beach.

The big players in the Mammoth project are Mark Rosenthal and Jay Becker of Raleigh. Original investors Terry Ballas and C. Ray Johnson are still involved. Dan Brockett, attorney for Mammoth Land Acquisition said it is a Limited Liability Company with a number of investors.

As for the hope for settlement of the dispute between Mammoth Land Acquisition and the Town of Mammoth, both sides declined to say much. Mr. Brockett took the position that the Town gambled by going to court. “In general,” he said, “most companies, when faced with this kind of liability, would not put their fate in the hands of a jury. The Town did,” he said. “They gambled.”

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