geo000666 1

V (I NYO *rC OUNw T«'YMW ,WI WW s SAN BERNARDINO COUNTY S I I , M i l s .C8&mh*.^ National m w m NEVADA MAVAi m WSTmATmIONm CHINA LAKE F t m W f N ' MILITARYt < RESERVATION CAUE0RNIA Mojave \ \ Pr%$er.v$‘'' Mojave #Barst0W River Newberry Springs Los Angeles Times Putting Their Faith in the Land [Land, from Page B1 ] down paym ent on a chunk of desolation. There Boulos M akse-mous, who’s licensed to practice dentistiy again, intends to build the D ream [pyramid, a hotel m odeled after L a s Vegas’ Luxor resort. “G o d m eant me to have this land,” said Maksem ous, who sought investors this year through a newspaper ad (he didn’t get any) and is pursuing a franchise deal with a hotel chain (he hasn’t heard b a c k ). “I need to build the hotel. It will be bigger and better than the one in L a s Vegas.” M ore common are people like Fahim, sm all investors Who la­ment not jum ping into the m ar­ket when Riverside w as inexpen­sive, Fontana w as a bargain and Barstow w as considered too far east. “They’re looking for hidden gems, overlooked things,” said Patrick Duffy, an analyst with H anley W ood M arket Intelli­gence, a C osta M esa-based real estate consulting firm. “It seems speculative. B ut G od bless them, because that’s how people make money.” O r lose it. The desert has a history o f real estate dream s evaporating in the blazing sun. California City, incorporated 41 years ago north of Edw ards A ir Force B ase as the state’s third-largest city in size, is home to about 12,000 people today. In the 1950s, “waterfront property” on the Salton Sea w as hyped by de­velopers until flooding and the stench o f algae bloom s and fish kills in the heavily saline lake sunk the boom . New berry Springs has seen its share of get-rich-quick dream s too. W orm farm scams. Chinchilla farm ventures. O s­trich farm schemes. “W e’re gullible out here, I guess,” said Fred Steam , a for­m er N ew York City police officer who moved to the Mojave for its clean air and has been brokering land in N ew berry Springs for a quarter-century. In the face o f Southern Cali­fornia’s cooling housing market, investors cite a litany of reasons N ew berry Springs is poised to at­tract national hom e builders who will significantly drive up M ARK B o s t e r L os Angeles Times V A C A N C Y : Weathered motels, service stations and shacks dot old Route 66 in and near New berry Springs. the value of their mostly vacant land. A m ong them: jo b growth and planned Indian casinos in Barstow, a new w ater pipeline to the California Aqueduct and far-from -certain plans for a high­speed train linking L a s Vegas and O range County. Ironically, the high-speed train idea helped fuel New berry Springs’ last real estate boom , in the 1980s, said Joseph W. Brady, a high desert land broker whose com pany tracks the region’s economy. W hen the bust came in 1990s, the value o f outlying va­cant land plunged about 80%. B ra d y worries it’s happening again. “W hy would anybody in their right m ind build out there now? . . . It’s alm ost on the edge of the Earth,” B rady said. H e believes b ig hom e builders m ay look to such places as New berry Springs — someday, but not in this un­certain market. B em i E diga insists he is not a gambler. Yet after watching his brother get rich in real estate, he started thinking: W hy not me? “R eal estate always goes up,” said Ediga, 34, a C arlsbad bush ness analyst who bought prop­erty in Arizona, W ashington state and his native India. Last year, New berry Springs caught his attention. [SeeLand, Page B9]