OCC’s Rabbit Island deal to close next month

Escrow is set to close Oct. 12 for the sale of Orange Coast College’s Rabbit Island.

The island’s sale for $2.41 million in Canadian currency (just under $2.4 million in American currency) was originally slated for Sept. 7, but the Canadian businessman purchasing Rabbit Island requested more time because he was “having trouble arranging all the financing,” said Doug Bennett, executive director of the OCC Foundation.

The businessman plans to use the island as a family retreat.

The college received the British Columbian isle as a gift from yachtsman Henry Wheeler of Downey in 2002. The school has been using it for photography, biology and kayaking classes.

A February report argued the $500,000 already spent maintaining the island and potential $150,000 a year to continue maintaining it was too costly, noting it was also ineligible for federal grants because it’s on foreign soil. The foundation soon after voted to sell the island.

OCC officials have been looking to replicate the island’s benefits closer to home. They are close to finding a spot on Catalina Island.

The OCC Foundation is nearing an agreement with a conservancy group for a three- to five-year lease on a Catalina Island cove by Dec. 1, Bennett said. The lease price should be somewhere between $15,000 and $20,000.

Like Rabbit Island, the cove would be utilized for sailing, photography and physical science classes.

Rabbit Island is 50 miles north of Vancouver at the top of the Strait of Georgia. The island is heavily wooded and rests near the tip of an archipelago and carries some unique species on its 36 acres, including a grasshopper more than 5 centimeters long.

Wheeler told the Daily Pilot in March he was proud that OCC preserved the island as well as it did.

JOSEPH SERNA may be reached at (714) 966-4619 or at joseph.serna@latimes.com.