Island buyer fiscally stranded

The Orange Coast College Foundation and a Canadian businessman failed to close escrow as planned this week on Orange Coast College’s Rabbit Island.

“He is still trying to arrange his finances,” said Doug Bennett, executive director of the college’s foundation. “It’s a matter of him getting the money, and we’re working with him.”

The price for the island, about 50 miles north of Vancouver at the top of the Strait of Georgia, is about $2.4 million.

“We did not anticipate this,” Bennett said. The businessman told the foundation he was having trouble getting the money together as recently as September.

The two sides have been negotiating since July and escrow was supposed to close on Wednesday.

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

The island is heavily wooded and sits near the top of an archipelago and carries some unique species on its 36 acres, including a 5-centimeter long grasshopper.

According to a report released in February the island’s maintenance was becoming too costly for the school. College officials have already spent $500,000 maintaining the island and projected it would cost $150,000 a year to continue its upkeep.

To replace the island, OCC foundation officials are nearing an agreement with a Catalina Island conservancy group for a three- to five-year lease on a cove there by Dec. 1.

The lease is estimated to be between $15,000 and $20,000.

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

Wheeler told the Daily Pilot in March he was proud of OCC’s preservation of the island.

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