Whitefish mogul expands holdings
A Fortune 500 company headed up by Whitefish financial mogul William Foley II has recently increased its substantial land holdings by acquiring the private Black Rock North golf course overlooking Lake Coeur d'Alene.
Fidelity National Timber Resources Inc., a subsidiary of Fidelity National Financial Inc., reportedly purchased a $14.6 million promissory note held by American Bank of Bozeman to acquire the property.
According to Greg Lane, of Whitefish, a Fidelity senior vice president and Foley's "right-hand man," the company looked at numerous projects across the U.S. before deciding to acquire the 1,100-acre Black Rock North project near Rockford Bay.
Work on building the 18-hole golf course was nearly completed when the global credit crisis and real estate crash occurred. American Bank filed a foreclosure action in Idaho's 1st District Court against Black Rock North developer Marshall Chesrown and others last year, seeking a sheriff's auction to repay the $14.6 million note and $400,000 in late charges and legal fees.
Foley has acquired numerous large land-holdings and businesses in Montana over the past five years. He is the majority stockholder at Whitefish Mountain Resort and owns Glacier Jet Center at Glacier Park International Airport. His Rock Creek Cattle Co. luxury vacation community in the Flint Range above the Montana State Prison in Deer Lodge features a professional golf course and 240 home sites on about 90,000 acres.
Three years ago, Foley acquired the Bozeman-based MacKenzie River Pizza Co. chain and two Whitefish restaurants — Mambo Italiano and Craggy Range Bar & Grill — and organized them under the name Glacier Restaurant Group LLC. Foley already owned the Corner House Grille in Whitefish, which has been remodeled since then into Latitude 48. The Ciao Mambo chain was initiated to imitate the successful Whitefish Italian restaurant.
Foley has long been interested in the restaurant business, albeit fast food. Fidelity took over CKE Restaurants in 1993, which operated Hardee's, Carl's Jr./Green Burrito, Rally's, Checker's Drive-Ins, Home Town Buffets, Galaxy Diners and Taco Bueno. By 1999, CKE Restaurants accounted for a quarter of all the hamburgers sold in the U.S.
Born in Austin, Texas, in 1944, Foley was an only child. His father was an Air Force officer who once commanded Edwards Air Force Base, and his mother came from a prominent ranching family. The family moved around, and Foley grew up in Alaska, California and even Venezuela, where he attended seventh through 10th grade.
He attended the United State Military Academy at West Point, graduating with an engineering degree in 1967. He joined the Air Force, rising to the rank of captain as he negotiated several billion dollars worth of aerospace contracts with The Boeing Co. He later got a master's in business administration from Seattle University and a law degree from the University of Washington.
Foley then moved to Phoenix, where he worked in corporate and real estate law and where he acquired his first business in 1984 — a small title insurance underwriter called Fidelity National Title.
Over the next six years, Fidelity acquired 50 other businesses and boosted its revenues to $1.4 billion. In 2000, when Fidelity acquired Chicago Title Corporation, Foley's firm went from being the fourth largest title insurance company in the U.S. to number one.
Foley pulled off 100-some corporate mergers and acquired several vineyards in California, and Fidelity continued diversifying to protect itself from real estate cycles. In a 2007 venture, the company began talks with Sequoia Capital about setting up Cyberhomes.com, an online real estate data bank similar to Realtor.com.
Two Sequoia Capital partners are prominent Whitefish residents — Michael Goguen and Mark Kvamme. Sequoia Capital were early partners with Google, Yahoo and YouTube.
Fidelity also acquired 293,000 acres of timberland near Bend, Ore., in 2008 from troubled Cascade Timberlands for about $94 million. A private development established there included a 33,000-acre community forest for the residents of Bend.
While Foley maintains an 11,000-square-foot ranch-style home featuring oak timbers from a Kentucky tobacco barn at the head of Whitefish Lake and a personal helicopter at his jet center, he splits his time between Montana, California and Florida.
An accomplished golfer who was ranked among the top-five executive golfers in 2004 by "Golf Digest" magazine, Foley often fishes and plays golf with Bill Walton III, one of the four founders of Rockpoint Group LLC, a real estate investment company with $33 billion in holdings worldwide.
Walton and his wife were awarded $440,000 in damages and legal fees in their 2007 suit against the city of Whitefish. A jury found that the couple's equal rights were violated when a former city planning director denied them a permit to build a large home on a steep slope on Houston Point overlooking Whitefish Lake.