Paddy McKillen’s son, U2’s the Edge (aka David Evans), the Edge’s wife, Derek Quinlan and the woman who held the rings at the Edge’s wedding ceremony. A plot worthy of Hollywood.

Oh and let’s not omit Mulryan Properties LLLP (principal: Derek Quinlan, yes really!) and Ronan Properties LLLP (principal: Dean McKillen, Paddy’s son, yes really!). The following is the story of how five apparently separate companies sought to develop luxury real estate on 157 acres of adjacent plots in Santa Monica, southern California only to have their plans rebuffed last week with the planning authorities having discovered that the applications mightn’t have been as separate as they first appeared.

Last week, a Staff Report of the California Coastal Commission concluded it was appropriate to decline five separate applications to build five separate residences ranging in size from 7,000 to 13,000 sq ft in the Santa Monica mountains in west Los Angeles. No story there – planning authorities reject planning applications all around the world every day for a variety of reasons. Yes, the fact that one of the applicant companies is apparently controlled by U2’s the Edge (aka David Evans) adds some chachacha to the bureaucracy but the applications were essentially about building houses – nothing extraordinary there. The Edge did go to the trouble of building a website to explain his vision for the project. And indeed some aspects of this story are not new – in 2009 Gemma O’Doherty in the Irish Independent wrote about the scheme and the involvement of Derek Quinlan.

But it is the people behind the applicant companies that is of interest. Now if it was the Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown county council examining the applications, they would probably have picked up very quickly that the applicants were connected to large-scale property developers – in Ireland, the names Ronan, Mulryan, Quinlan and McKillen have practically become household names on the back of the property boom that swallowed the country in the mid-2000s but alas has today spit the country back out. The folks at the California Coastal Commission can be forgiven for not being familiar with the fact that Johnny Ronan and Sean Mulryan are two of the Top 10 NAMA developers with debts in excess of €1bn (USD $1.4bn) each. Derek Quinlan is also a NAMA Top 10 developer and were it not for the legal case that Paddy McKillen took against NAMA last July in which he has had partial success today, he too would be a NAMA Top 10 developer. It should be stressed that there is no evidence to connect Johnny Ronan or Sean Mulryan to the applicant companies in the Santa Monica scheme – at present it seems like a co-incidence that two of the applicant companies bear the surnames of two of the most prominent property developers in the State.

So precisely what happened in west Los Angeles? Back in 2007 the Edge bought a 157-acre plot in the Santa Monica mountains with views out to the Pacific and over Malibu. A scheme developed to build five luxury single-family residences. Derek Quinlan became involved. The planning applications have been around for nearly four years and have undergone some changes but were finally exhaustively examined last week and a conclusion was reached that it was appropriate to deny them. The land apparently cost USD $9m in 2007. According to the 2009 Irish Independent story, the five properties might have been expected to fetch USD $40m each.

In 2007/8 six separate applications were made by five separate companies as follows:

(1) Lunch Properties LLLP (LLLP means limited liability limited partnership and is a form of company allowed in the state of Delaware in the US where the five companies are registered), whose principal is James Vanden Berg, the project manager

(2) Vera Properties LLLP, whose principal is the Edge (aka David Evans)

(3) Mulryan Properties LLLP, whose principal was Derek Quinlan until July 2010 when control passed to Tim and Gillian Delaney. Tim Delaney was a Vice President at Polygram Records until 1999, the record company that produced U2 albums. There is no evidence of Sean Mulryan, one of Ireland’s most prominent developers being associated with this company.

(4) Morleigh Properties LLLP, whose principal was Morleigh Steinberg (the Edge’s wife) until April 2010 when control passed to Chantal O’Sullivan (of O’Sullivan Antiques and the woman who held the rings at the Edge’s wedding) and Lisa Menichino

(5) Ronan Properties LLLP, whose principal was Jacqueline Cremin (a director of Quinlan’s companies) until April 2010 when control passed to Dean McKillen, son of Paddy McKillen. There is no evidence of Johnny Ronan, one of Ireland’s most prominent developers being associated with this company.

(6) A joint application between Mulryan/Morleigh

The planning applications were examined last week and a conclusion reached was that it was appropriate to deny the applications for a number of reasons, interference with environmentally sensitive habitat areas and the development diminishing the scenic beauty of the area included. But one of the key issues investigated by the planning authorities was whether the five applicant companies were connected and they concluded after some digging that they were. That conclusion had implications as to the planning modalities, but the point of interest on here was the connection between the Edge, Derek Quinlan and Paddy McKillen (via his son Dean) and the fact that two of the companies, Ronan Properties LLLP and Mulryan Properties LLLP, bear the name of two of Ireland’s most prominent property developers. There appears to have been some concerted effort in 2010 to change the apparent ownership of the five application companies as detailed from page 73 of the California Coastal Commission report but it seems that the Commission decided that the applicant companies were in fact connected.

UPDATE: 2nd April, 2011. The agenda for the California Coastal Commission meeting for April 2011 shows that the above applications are still listed for “future” business which means they may be dealt with in the coming months.

UPDATE: 7th June, 2011. The agenda for the California Coastal Commission meeting for June 2011 shows that the applications will be examined on Thursday 16th June, this following several postponements.

UPDATE: 18th June, 2011. The Commission said “No!” by 8-4 though The Edge’s spokesperson said he may appeal the decision. “We’d like to be treated fairly, like any other applicant that comes before the Coastal Commission” said Fiona Hutton as reported by Reuters.

UPDATE: 27th August, 2011. The September 2011 agenda for the California Coastal Commission’s meeting to discuss planning applications in the Malibu area has been published (available here) and it reveals that there is pending litigation by four of the five companies which were exclusively revealed on here earlier this year to be seeking to develop luxury real estate in the hills overlooking Malibu on the California coast. The four companies which are apparently suing the Commission are Lunch, Vera, Mulryan and Ronan – all are LLLPs apparently registered in the US state of Delaware. The fifth company, Morleigh Properties is not listed. Although I don’t have the hand the detail of the legal action, the Commission did turn down plans by the Edge and his associates earlier this year and at the time, the Edge’s spokesperson, Fiona Hutton, indicated that the Commission hadn’t heard the last from the applicants : “we’d like to be treated fairly, like any other applicant that comes before the Coastal Commission”, she’s reported as saying.