Westminster plans to discuss city manager’s contract this week

• July 11, 2023

When Christine Cordon took over the role of Westminster’s city manager in a time of political turmoil in the city, she was lauded for providing a calming presence in often contentious meetings.

Residents even voted for her to be recognized in the Register’s list of 125 most influential people along with Assistant City Manager Adolfo Ozaeta for sparking changes in Westminster. The duo brought back public events, implemented the city’s first strategic plan and, according to the nominator, introduced the city to topics that were considered taboo before.

Now, as Westminster’s city leaders prepare to discuss Cordon’s contract and employee evaluation in Wednesday’s upcoming regularly scheduled meeting, they have added to the closed session discussion “Public Employee Discipline/Dismissal/Release,” according to the agenda.

It is unclear if Cordon will be dismissed of her duties on Wednesday or if a clause for dismissal will be added to her contract.

Ahead of Wednesday’s meeting, Councilmember Amy Phan West said periodic evaluations are needed so “the City Council can establish clear expectations for the city manager and ensure that her actions align with the goals of the council.”

“It also provides an opportunity for constructive dialogue and feedback, allowing the city manager to address any concerns raised by the council members,” she said.

But the hint of potential change to Cordon’s contract has been met with uproar among Westminster residents as well as with some members of the City Council.

“Her unwarranted dismissal would be devastating to the future of our city,” said Councilmember Carlos Manzo. “Since her appointment, she has conducted herself with the utmost professionalism. She has moved us in a positive direction and (is) doing more with minimal resources.”

Westminster, Manzo said, does not need a “yes person” who just appeases councilmembers’ ideas and suggestions, but rather the city manager should provide “honest” answers to councilmembers’ questions and ideas. He said Cordon has done just that.

“We don’t know everything and depend on professional guidance,” Manzo said. “We should not be at odds with our city manager if we don’t get the answers we want to hear.”

Terry Rains, who runs the popular social media platform Westminster Buzz and is a council observer, said she has observed that the greater community is outraged and fearful of what Cordon’s potential dismissal could mean for the city.

“The community wholeheartedly trusts Christine and her ability to run our city. She is a straight shooter, honest and respectful of everyone,” Rains said. “Residents and business leaders know Christine will never cross legal or ethical lines for anyone.”

If Cordon is let go, Rains said, it would be for political reasons. She speculated that Cordon would be replaced by someone willing to cross lines she is not.

“If she is fired, any hope of this city surviving and eventually thriving will be lost. Westminster will likely become the most corrupt city ever,” Rains said.

In 2021, Cordon was elevated to the role of city manager from her role as city clerk after City Manager Marwan Youssef retired following outrage over his decision to hire former Westminster Councilmember Tyler Diep as a city consultant.

Diep was earning $6,400 a month for connecting councilmembers to elected officials. But the contract was short-lived: because of the outrage, Diep canceled his contract a little over a month into signing it, pocketing $13,400 for the short time he served as a consultant.

Since taking the city’s top job, Cordon was instrumental in pushing for city leaders to put a 1% sales tax measure on the ballot. Without the sales tax measure, Westminster would have been forced to eliminate more than 30 senior management positions, cut its police force by 33% and disband all commissions not required by law.

“We’re already running thin,” Cordon said at the time.

Earlier this year, she was recognized by Rep. Michelle Steel, R-Seal Beach, and State Sen. Janet Nguyen, R-Huntington Beach, for her work in Westminster.

While Cordon is usually calm during council meetings, in a late May meeting, what was an innocuous staff presentation soon turned tense. Staffers had just presented to the council a plan to install billboards on the 405 Freeway to bring in some much-needed cash to the city. They also shared a potential company to contract with.

“I find it insulting,” said Cordon as the council majority — which includes Mayor Chi Charlie Nguyen and Councilmembers NamQuan Nguyen and Phan West — questioned how staffers went through the RFP process to select the billboard company and how they determined what is best for the city.

“There is a transparent, clear process and how you issue RFPs in a general law city. This is exactly what we’ve done,” Cordon said. “If you would like to be behind the scenes, with the process, writing the process, picking out the consultants, please by all means we have plenty of city jobs available.”

Ultimately, the council voted to go ahead with staff recommendations at the June 28 meeting, praising staff for their work.

Cordon and NamQuan Nguyen declined to comment for the story while Chi Charlie Nguyen did not respond to a request for comment.

The City Council is scheduled to meet at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, July 12 at 8200 Westminster Blvd.

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​ Orange County Register 

Around $10 on tolls? OCTA’s decision on 405 toll costs coming soon

• July 11, 2023

Around $10 for tolls on the 405 Freeway? That could soon be the reality for some drivers.

With the almost $2.2 billion improvement project on the 405 nearing completion by the end of the year, the Orange County Transportation Authority is preparing for the 405 Express Lanes (a single lane in each direction) to become operational and start collecting tolls.

On Wednesday, July 12, those on OCTA’s Finance and Administration Committee will discuss the toll policy. According to documents released ahead of the meeting, the 405 Express Lanes — to be located in the middle of the freeway like the 91 Express Lanes — will give solo drivers the choice to speed up their commutes for a fee.

Carpoolers can travel for free if there are three or more individuals in their vehicle with a valid account and transponder.

During the first three and a half years after the opening of the 405 Express Lanes, carpoolers with two individuals can travel for free during non-peak hours with a valid account and transponder.

Drivers with a designated veterans or a disabled person license plate will always ride the Express Lanes for free. Clean air vehicles, as designated by the state, will receive a 15% discount. The toll road will be free for motorcycles.

Once the Finance and Administration Committee approves the toll policy, the entire OCTA board will then take it up for consideration at its regularly scheduled board meeting on Monday, July 24.

“The toll policy basically lowers and raises tolls based on congestion,” said Joel Zlotnik, OCTA’s strategic communications manager.

With multiple entry and exit points on the Express Lanes, the toll amount will depend on the stretch of freeway a driver is traveling and the time of day too. The most expensive toll amount planned, $9.95, is for commuters traveling the whole length of the 405 Express Lanes in the northbound direction between 3-5 p.m. on a Friday while southbound drivers can expect to pay up to $6.20 in tolls.

OCTA’s toll rates are less expensive than others in the region. The maximum toll cost per mile on the 405 Express Lanes is $0.73. The comparative toll cost per mile on the 10 Express Lanes and 110 Express Lanes is $2.40.

Once the Express Lanes open at the end of the year, Zlotnik said, there will be an adjustment period when commuters and OCTA adapt to the new normal of a toll road on the 405.

“That adjustment period gives us the opportunity to lower or raise tolls to ensure we’re best meeting the policy goals of the Express Lanes,” Zlotnik said.

Some of the goals of implementing toll roads on the 405 include keeping traffic freely flowing and encouraging commuters to carpool.

Peak hours have been designated as Monday through Friday from 6-10 a.m. and 2-7 p.m. as well as on weekends from 1-7 p.m. However, this could change once the 405 Express Lanes open. For the first 12 weeks, staffers will monitor the traffic on the freeway and will adjust peak hours accordingly.

After that initial period of adjustment, toll rates will be reviewed and adjusted on a quarterly basis, Zlotnik said.

Money collected from the tolls will go toward paying back the $629 million federal loan — through the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act passed by Congress in 1980 — OCTA received that went toward the construction of the 405 Express Lanes, Zlotnik said.

OCTA will also create an expenditure plan on where excess toll revenues will go, he said. Under California law, toll revenue needs to be spent within the freeway project area. OCTA also manages some of the express lanes on the 91, and Zlotnik said around $750 million in excess toll revenue from that freeway has been spent on projects within the corridor.

Like on other toll roads in California, those using the 405 Express Lanes will need the FasTrak transponder, he said. However, the FasTrak transponder has to be the adjustable one (not the sticker) to account for how many people are riding the toll roads, Zlotnik said.

The 405 Express Lanes are just one component of the 405 Improvement Project, a voter-approved Measure M project which is also the largest highway project currently under construction in the state.

The improvement plan extends 16 miles from Costa Mesa to the Orange County-Los Angeles County border and includes adding a regular lane in each direction of 405 between Euclid Street and the 605, adding a second lane that will become part of the 405 Express Lanes between SR-73 to the 605, reconstructing 18 bridges that span the freeway, improving local streets and freeway on- and off-ramps and sidewalk and bus lane additions.

The improvement project is 90% complete.

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​ Orange County Register 

Rock guitarist Nita Strauss has a new solo album and a Rams Super Bowl ring

• July 11, 2023

Though guitarist Nita Strauss is best known for touring with shock rock legend Alice Cooper and more recently pop and rock songstress Demi Lovato, football fans may recognize her from shredding in between plays and at halftime at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood as the official in-house guitarist for the Los Angeles Rams.

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Strauss has been a lifelong Rams fan and had been asked to play several times during games since the team returned to the area in 2016. After the Rams’ new home at SoFi Stadium was complete in 2020, she became the guitarist of the NFL team and rocked the Rams through a Super Bowl victory over the Cincinnati Bengals in 2022.

That winning season seems like a blur to Strauss now, she admits, noting that she was extremely busy in 2021. In all of 2022, she said she was only home for a total of 18 days — most of which she spent doing laundry — due to a jam-packed touring schedule with Cooper, Lovato, her own solo gigs and countless red-eye flights to LAX after late night shows to perform at the Rams home games. However, her dedication to her craft and her favorite football team paid off in the form of a giant, custom, bling-filled Super Bowl LVI ring.

“I would play a gig, sleep at the airport hotel until 3:30 in the morning, fly to (LAX) and head straight to the stadium, play the game and get right back to the airport to play a show in the next city,” Strauss said during a recent phone interview, adding that a steady football stadium job is a dream scenario for a guitar player. “It was a grueling season for me — and the team! So, it was cool to get this sort of bucket list accolade at the end of all of that. I got a ring and I got some frequent flyer miles. It was all worth it.”

During our call earlier this month, Strauss was preparing to live out another dream: finally releasing her sophomore solo album, “The Call of the Void” on Sumerian Records, with a special show at the Whisky a Go-Go in West Hollywood. The now-36-year-old said she remembers playing the iconic venue as a teenager with her metal band Lia-Fail, which also featured now Olympian and world champion boxer Mikaela Mayer on bass.

It’s the perfect spot, she said, to live debut her new songs, which include several instrumentals as well as collaborations with vocalists like Motionless in White’s Chris Motionless on “Digital Bullets,” Halestorm’s Lzzy Hale on “Through the Noise,” L.A.-based singer-songwriter Dorothy on “Victorious,” Disturbed’s David Draiman with “Dead Inside” and she brought in Cooper for “Winner Takes All.”

“I’ve had the crazy opportunity to work with Alice now on two records — on my record and his upcoming ‘Road’ record — and it was cool getting to know someone I’ve known musically for a long time in this new sense, because people in the studio are very different creatively,” she said. “He was super receptive for the ideas I had for his record and, obviously, he knocked his performance out of the park on my record because he’s a pro’s pro. It was really cool sharing this new chapter of the journey with him in that way.”

Working on her second album was much different than her first, 2018’s fully instrumental “Controlled Chaos.” With that initial effort, Strauss said she felt unsure if fans would even want to hear her own music or just wanted her to stick to the stuff she played with Cooper or parts from her time in the all-female Iron Maiden cover band, The Iron Maidens. She sought funding to support the album through a Kickstarter crowdfunding page to gauge interest. The initial pledge was for $20,000 to get the recording going, but by the end of the campaign, her fans had gifted her more than $165,000 to create her solo debut.

“It was very intimidating,” she said when the numbers were tallied. “It might not have been for others, but for me it was a life-changing amount of money. I was like ‘Oh my God’ and it was a lot of pressure because I had to deliver. It was no longer about me at that point, it was for all the people who put their money where their mouths were and said ‘We believe in you and we want this record.’ I had to make it happen at that point.”

Strauss said that knowing that supportive audience was there was also the confidence boost she needed heading into “The Call of the Void.”

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“This record was an amazing experience,” she said. “With the first record, I didn’t really collaborate with anyone. It was my boyfriend and my best friend playing with me and they knew and understood me better than anyone and knew what my vision was and when we were done, we put the album out and that was it, that was the process. On this route, there was a lot more to learn in working with these incredible artists who have their own careers and labels and management, which made things a lot more complicated, but in terms of the artistic part of it, that was such a great experience for me.”

On the album, Strauss said she’s perfectly fine just shredding on guitar and letting the pro vocalists do their thing.

“The more amazing singers I work with, the less I want to get on the microphone,” she said with a laugh. “I’m working with these absolutely phenomenal vocalists and I can sing a little and anyone that comes and sees me will see me do some backups here and there. I’ll do what I love, which is to play guitar and let these wonderful vocalists do what they love and I think it’s better that way.”

While she’s graced the cover of countless guitar and rock-focused magazines and has been named on several best guitarist lists, she’s also accomplished many other impressive feats. “Dead Inside” off of the new record, topped the Billboard Mainstream Rock Airplay chart earlier this year, making her the first female solo artist in more then three decades to top that chart. The last time was Alannah Myles’ “Black Velvet,” according to Billboard.

Of course, there have been been other female-fronted bands that have topped that chart including The Pretty Reckless and Halestorm.

“I definitely think it’s long overdue,” Strauss said of being the first solo artist to achieve that honor in so long. “That’s not to say that women aren’t out there doing it. There are a lot of female-fronted bands that have done it, so it’s not as dire as it may sound at first. That being said, there were a lot of women who blazed the trail for me to get to this point today and I hope what I’m doing is continuing to move the needle in the right direction.”

Strauss was also the first female to create a signature guitar with Japanese instrument makers Ibanez.

“I got to design my dream guitar and not only play it myself, but have other people play it, too,” she said of the collaboration. “I see people at meet-and-greets and on social media making my guitar their new favorite guitar and that is one of the most gratifying things I’ve ever experienced.”

She has no idea how many days she’ll end up being able to spend at home in 2023. She hasn’t had many days off work so far and will be out this month for a few more solo dates, then the Rams return to SoFi for preseason games in August. She’ll be back on the road in the late summer and early fall with Alice Cooper as that band teams up with Rob Zombie to launch the Freaks on Parade Tour, which comes to Honda Center in Anaheim on Saturday, Sept. 23.

“Last year was a lot; it was crazy,” she said. “But honestly, it’s a year every guitar player dreams of. Getting to play some of the biggest stadiums and festivals all over the world, working with a NFL team, working with a rock legend and a more mainstream, younger legend-in-the-making with Demi, touring with my own band and doing my own music with my friends. I don’t know what more I could have asked for.

“Except for maybe a few more days to do laundry,” she swiftly added.

Rob Zombie and Alice Cooper: Freaks on Parade Tour

With: Ministry and Filter

When: 6 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 23

Where: Honda Center, 2695 East Katella Ave., Anaheim

Tickets: Starting at $39.50 at Ticketmaster.com 

​ Orange County Register 

Amazon Prime Day isn’t the catalyst it used to be

• July 11, 2023

Amazon.com Inc.’s annual Prime Day shows that e-commerce isn’t the driver it once was for the stock, as investor focus shifts to the company’s faster-growing and profitable cloud-computing unit.

In the past four years, the stock has fallen in the week of the two-day sale in which the retail giant discounts swathes of items. The first four years beginning in 2015 saw Amazon shares average a gain of more than 2% in the week of the event, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The focus on cloud computing has only increased as Amazon Web Services grew into the company’s main source of operating income, amid greater investor scrutiny over who stands to benefit most from the rollout of artificial intelligence applications.

“Most people invest in Amazon for both” e-commerce and AWS, Eric Clark, portfolio manager at Accuvest Global Advisors, said in an interview. But with “AI being part of the conversation kind of almost every minute of every day, it’s clearly the AWS opportunity and the potential AI implications” that’s proving to be more attractive.

Prime Day, which began Tuesday, is likely to generate about $5 billion of incremental revenue this year, according to JPMorgan analyst Doug Anmuth. While that would be up 13% from last year, the pace of growth has slowed steadily each year since a 30% increase in 2020, Anmuth wrote in a recent research note.

Even though Amazon’s retail business accounted for almost two-thirds of sales last year, the faster-growing AWS unit was responsible for all of the company’s $12.2 billion in operating profit. While growth at AWS slowed to a record low in the first quarter, analysts are optimistic that demand for so-called generative AI applications is poised to reinvigorate sales.

Amazon shares have rallied 55% this year, as the company works to slash expenses in part by eliminating at least 27,000 jobs. Despite the advance, it’s still about 30% below its 2021 peak.

In April, Amazon unveiled generative AI technology aimed at cloud customers as well as a marketplace for AI tools from other companies. It’s also investing $100 million to help customers develop and deploy new kinds of AI products as it competes with the cloud computing units of Microsoft Corp. and Alphabet Inc.

“Prime Day will be a good branding opportunity to capture not only sales, but new customers into the Amazon web,” said Sylvia Jablonski, co-founder and chief investment officer at Defiance ETFs. “However, the future for Amazon is very likely in AWS and its participation in the innovation and growth of AI.”

©2023 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

​ Orange County Register 

What’s up with Amazon’s invite-only Prime Day deals?

• July 11, 2023

Amazon’s Prime Day sales event starts Tuesday, but some shoppers have been browsing deals for weeks — hoping to snag an invite-only discount.

Part of an ever-expanding Prime Day, Amazon rolled out a new, invitation-only deals program ahead of this year’s sale. The program allows customers to request an invitation to purchase discounted items that Amazon expects might sell out, including things like a Fire TV or noise-canceling headphones.

There are a limited number of products available through the invitations, Amazon says, and once an invitation is in hand, customers have until the end of the two-day sales event to make the purchase, a spokesperson said.

The invitations have been available for browsing for the last three weeks, Amazon said. Customers will no longer be allowed to request most invitations at the start of Prime Day but some deals may have extended periods, the company added.

To secure an invite, customers click a yellow button on an item’s product page. Shoppers can only request one invite for a product and can only purchase one of those products if they do get an invitation. Customers can request invites for several different products. Amazon will notify customers if they have gotten the invite.

It’s not yet clear how many customers requested invitations.

Lesley Hensell, the co-founder of Riverbend Consulting, which works with third-party sellers on Amazon’s digital marketplace, expects Amazon may be testing out the invitation-only deals this year as a beta-type program and looking to expand in the future.

“Amazon builds a lot of things in flight,” she said. “The plane is already off the ground and they’re still building.”

She compared the new offering to the evolution of Prime Day since Amazon first rolled it out in 2015. At the start, there was a lot of confusion among sellers and not a lot of information from Amazon. Now, “it’s like a well-oiled machine,” she said.

Since 2015, Prime Day has continued to expand in length, discounts offered and ways to shop. It grew from a 24-hour event in its first year to 30 hours in 2017, 36 in 2018 and 48 in 2019, according to research from analysts at J.P. Morgan & Co.

The sale was first offered in nine countries and has now expanded to 24, the analysts found. Amazon grew the number of discounts offered from thousands in 2015 to hundreds of thousands in 2017, over 1 million in 2018 and over 2 million in 2021.

Analysts from J.P. Morgan expect this year’s Prime Day will generate $7 billion of revenue for Amazon, up 12% from the roughly $6.2 billion Amazon brought in from the 2022 sales event.

In a report ahead of the sale, the analysts touted Amazon’s faster delivery speeds for Prime members as a selling point that would drive customers to the platform this year. But, they cautioned “macro headwinds” could continue to put pressure on consumer spending.

In 2022, Amazon said it sold more items during its Prime Day event than any other year, totaling 300 million that year. Ahead of the 2023 event, Amazon said it’s now offering more deals than any other Prime Day event. It plans to drop new deals every 30 minutes “during select periods,” according to a news release.

Last year, Amazon also added a second sales event — Prime Early Access — in October that offered a similar day of discounts and kick-started the holiday shopping season.

Hensell, from Riverbend Consulting, expects sellers to be “champing at the bit” to get a product listed through the invitation-only program because it would make their listing even more visible to consumers.

“Competition on Amazon is really fierce right now and a lot of sellers are struggling,” Hensell said. “Any opportunity to blow out some inventory they overstocked or to try to sell a lot of units. … (The sellers) want it so badly they can taste it.”

©2023 The Seattle Times. Visit seattletimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

​ Orange County Register 

Annual crime report shows Californians’ fear of increasing crime is justified

• July 11, 2023

Political officeholders at all levels and of all ideological stripes habitually pursue a time-dishonored practice when releasing data.

If it’s positive, politicians try to maximize its importance with lavish news conferences and self-congratulatory declarations.

If, on the other hand, the data have a negative cast, they will be released quietly, often late on a Friday afternoon, to minimize media coverage.

California’s annual report on crime was released this year on the Friday before what for many would be a four-day, Fourth of July holiday weekend. That’s a tipoff that it would not be good news – and, in fact, it received minimal media attention.

The 2022 report revealed that the state’s violent crime rate increased by 6.1% since 2021, and property crime was up 6.2%. Homicides dipped very slightly, but robberies jumped by 10.2%.

Attorney General Rob Bonta issued a low-key statement with the data release, saying, “While crime rates remain significantly below their historical highs, property and violent crimes continue to have devastating consequences for communities across the state, and gun violence remains a major threat to public safety.”

One can be certain that had California seen a drop in crime in 2022, Bonta would have trumpeted it as loudly as possible.

Let’s be clear: Neither Bonta nor any other attorney general can have more than a marginal effect on crime rates. Nevertheless, their campaigns often depict themselves as the state’s top cop and imply that they do have such authority.

Why crime rates ebb and flow is the subject of never-ending academic and political debate – and is colored by equally erratic public concerns about being victimized.

At the moment, Californians’ worries about crime appear to be on the upswing, as indicated by one of the Public Policy Institute of California’s periodic polls, conducted just before last fall’s election.

“Californians’ perception of crime spiked during the pandemic – as did certain types of crime,” PPIC found, adding, “nearly two in three Californians call violence and street crime in their local community a problem. This includes 31% who call them a big problem, a noticeable increase from February 2020 (24%).”

The poll found that among racial and ethnic groups, Black Californians expressed the highest level of concern about crime, women were more concerned than men, and Republicans more than Democrats or independent voters.

The data released on June 30 imply that those concerns are rooted in fact. Crime did increase sharply last year, particularly robberies, and it has not gone unnoticed in the media.

The proliferation of cameras in stores and in the hands of cellphone owners has produced a never-ending supply of crime video snippets, such as smash-and-grab invasions of stores, for television newscasts, which then reverberate on YouTube and other online outlets.

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Just a few days after the crime report release, for example, a San Francisco TV station aired video of criminals breaking into a Bay Area visitor’s rental car in broad daylight, stealing the contents and driving away.

Bonta and the man who appointed him attorney general before he won reelection in November, Gov. Gavin Newsom, have pursued somewhat ambivalent postures about crime. They lament its effects on victims and take some public crime-fighting steps while championing criminal justice reform to reduce traditional punishment of those caught breaking the law.

A day before the crime data were released, Newsom dispatched more California Highway Patrol officers to battle open air drug dealing in San Francisco, a city he once governed as mayor.

In decades past, spikes in crime have had major impacts on California’s political atmosphere – helping Republicans become dominant in the 1980s, for example.

Were crime to continue its currently upward path, it could once again become a game-changing political factor.

CalMatters is a public interest journalism venture committed to explaining how California’s state Capitol works and why it matters. For more stories by Dan Walters, go to Commentary.

​ Orange County Register 

Clippers use strong start to beat Kings for 1st summer league win

• July 11, 2023

LAS VEGAS — Jordan Bowden came off the bench to score 13 of his 18 points in a dominant first half and the Clippers eased past the Sacramento Kings, 80-70, on Monday night to even their record in summer league play.

Bowden shot 7 for 9 from the field, including 4 for 6 from behind the arc, and helped the Clippers open a 44-25 lead by halftime.

Kobe Brown, the last pick of the first round (No. 30 overall), started and contributed 12 points and eight rebounds for the Clippers (1-1). Brown was 5 for 14 from the field (1 for 6 from long range) in 30 minutes. Second-round draft pick Jordan Miller also started, finishing with six points and three rebounds in 26 minutes.

Veteran Xavier Moon scored 18 points on 6-for-12 shooting to go with five rebounds, six assists, four steals and two blocked shots in 29 minutes. Moussa Diabate added five points and team-high nine rebounds in 24 minutes.

Two of three second-round picks played for the Kings (1-1). Colby Jones started and had team-highs of 19 points and nine rebounds. Jalen Slawson had two points and three assists off the bench. Keon Ellis pitched in with 16 points, seven rebounds, five assists and three steals.

The Clippers’ next game is Wednesday at 12:30 p.m. against Memphis. They also play Friday afternoon (vs. Philadelphia, 1:30 p.m.) before one more game against an opponent to be determined at a day and time to be announced.

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​ Orange County Register 

Superstar NFL QB Josh Allen pays $7.2 million for Dana Point house

• July 11, 2023

Buffalo Bills’ star quarterback Josh Allen is the owner of a 2,808-square-foot house in Dana Point’s guard-gated Monarch Bay.

According to a person familiar with the July 5 deal who asked not to be identified, the 6-foot-5-inch NFL player bought the house for $7.2 million, paying 4% less than the initial $7.5 million asking price.

The single-story beach house completed in 1962 and updated, sits on a flat, quarter-acre lot. It has four bedrooms, three bathrooms, and floor-to-ceiling glass walls.

Even as they extend the open, airy floor plan to the outside, the house is secure from prying eyes.

Large pavers cut a path to the front glass door inside the gated courtyard.

The foyer forks off to different areas of the home, including the dining room to the right. Behind the foyer is the family room with a black brick fireplace and built-in cabinets. The kitchen is small and streamlined.

A large lawn dominates the backyard, with ample room for a future pool or home expansion. As the listing reads, you can “enjoy this amazing beach home the way it is or design your future dream home.”

The Monarch Bay neighborhood surrounds a members-only beach club with resort-style amenities such as tennis and golf nearby.

Philip Immel and Ryan Immel of Pacific Sotheby’s International Realy held the listing. Andy Stavros of Douglas Elliman of California represented Allen.

Allen, 27, is among the elite quarterbacks in the NFL. In August 2021, he signed a six-year, $258 million extension that puts him under contract with the Bills through 2028. He is also an avid golfer.

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​ Orange County Register