Dear Readers,

I met Mark Orgill in the late summer of 2022 and encouraged him to run for City Council. As we got to know each other, he told me about his relationship with his former boss, Mo Honarkar. He said he was instrumental in getting Mo the lease for Terra Laguna. He also said he had a good relationship with the Festival of Arts (FOA). I took both statements on faith and still believe what he said was true.

Information obtained confirms this as Mark was paid $10,000 by FOA “ to understand the process for the submittal of an application to do development or construction…” under a consulting agreement in 2022.

MOM, it seems, claimed that Mo had agreed merged all his properties and leases into MOM LLCs via a joint venture agreement (JV) with Mo. But there was no proof as the Arbitrator had stated.

The Arbitrator’s decision on that question is quoted below more than once.

So, the question remains: what convinced FOA, and the City, to assist the MOM Group in evicting Mo from Terra on June 30 2023? The Laguna Beach Police Department was called that day by Mo but refused to get involved saying it was a “business dispute.” The arbitration documents say otherwise. It is reasonable to assume that MOM didn’t manage to do this without the help of other parties.

And furthermore, why didn’t FOA and the City’s attorneys know this? And if they did, on what legal basis did they approve the takeover?

There are many unanswered questions, and I will continue to seek answers from all the parties involved. But what we know now does not look good for FOA, the City, or Mr. Orgill.

Thanks for reading my Substack articles,

George

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What the Arbitrator Found

On May 12, 2026, retired Judge David A. Thompson, sitting as arbitrator in the JAMS arbitration between Mo Honarkar and the MOM Respondents (Mahender Makhijani, Continuum Analytics, and the MOM entities), issued his Final Award. It runs 44 pages and awards Honarkar and the MOM JV Entities roughly $1.33 billion in combined direct and derivative damages. Read the Indy article HERE.

Buried in Section III.L of that award addresses Honarkar’s declaratory relief claim, a finding that speaks directly to what happened at Terra Laguna Beach in late June of 2023:

“ (4) The following entities appear on Exhibit C of the Operating Agreements and ACA but were never intended by the parties to be Contributed Entities to the JV: 4G — Terra Laguna Beach Inc. — (Ex. 1354; 7.3 Tr. at 1915:7-1919:6.) ”

In plain English: Terra Laguna Beach, Inc. it declares that the entity that operates the restaurant on the Festival of Arts grounds was never part of the joint venture Honarkar and Makhijani’s MOM Group formed. It was never merged into MOM’s holdings, never one of the roughly 20 properties MOM took control of. The arbitrator carried that finding into his formal conclusions:

“ 11. Claimants have proven their declaratory relief claim against the MOM Parties; and Claimants are therefore entitled to the declaratory relief requested. (Sec. III.L. above; FAC at 27.) ”

The Arbitrator had already said as much more than a year earlier. In a May 12, 2025 Ruling on Request for Clarification and quoted directly in the Final Award the arbitrator confirmed his Partial Interim Award “ was intended to and did in fact determine the Declaratory Relief Entities (including Terra Laguna Beach, Inc.) are not now and never have been owned by the MOM JV Entities. ”

That finding raises an obvious question: why did the Festival of Arts file an unlawful detainer action against Terra Laguna Beach, Inc. — demanding rent for January and February 2026 — when the presiding judge ultimately ruled that Honarkar had been deprived of actual possession of the restaurant since June 30, 2023, that the Festival never restored it even after recognizing him as Terra’s lawful president and CEO, and that his obligation to pay the disputed rent therefore never arose?

The court invalidated the Three-Day Notice, held the Festival could not maintain the eviction action on it, and named Terra Laguna Beach, Inc. the prevailing party, entitled to possession of the restaurant at 650C Laguna Canyon Road and to move for its attorney’s fees and costs. (More on that ruling below.)

Not now. Never have been.

The award repeats the point a third time, in a footnote explaining why Terra’s lost restaurant income was calculated separately from the $326 million in property-portfolio damages: “ the Arbitrator notes Terra Laguna was never contributed to the joint venture. (PFA at 40, para. 4.) — Because Terra Laguna was never a joint venture property”

Three separate places in the record. Same conclusion each time.

Why This Matters for the City Council Allegations

This finding reframes what Hasty Honarkar told the Council on June 23. She described armed guards representing the MOM Group taking physical control of Terra on June 30 — July 1, 2023, and accused the city and the Festival of Arts of letting a “ hostile takeover ” proceed with zero accountability. The day before MOM CA Investco provided an Indemnification Agreement that would shield FOA from legal liability and stated that MOM holds all shares of Terra Laguna Beach, Inc. But it seems they didn’t check the Joint Venture Agreement (JV) between Mo and MOM.

If Terra had been a jointly owned asset in dispute between business partners, the city’s posture of studied neutrality and treat it as a private matter, might be defensible. But the arbitrator found, based on the parties’ own contribution exhibits and sworn testimony, that Terra was never MOMs to take in the first place. That changes the July 1 2023 takeover from a contract dispute into something closer to what the Honarkar family alleged all along: an outside party (MOM) asserting control over a business it had no ownership stake in, while the city and the Festival of Arts did nothing to stop it.

A Second Court Reached the Same Conclusion

It isn’t only the arbitrator. On July 28, 2026, the Orange County Superior Court (Department C61) ruled in a separate unlawful detainer case — Festival of Arts of Laguna Beach v. Terra Laguna Beach, Inc., Case No. 30-2026-01550059-CU-UD-CJC — that the Festival could not evict Terra Laguna Beach, Inc. from the restaurant at 650C Laguna Canyon Road.

The court’s findings, drawn from trial testimony by Honarkar, Festival President David Perry, and FOA Director of Security Operations track the arbitrators on several points. MOM CA occupied and operated the restaurant from July 1, 2023 until MOM’s bankruptcy proceedings intervened in the spring of 2025.

• The court found that the Festival “knowingly permitted MOM CA to occupy and operate the premises pursuant to the Indemnification Agreement beginning in July 2023” using the same Indemnification Agreement MOM CA executed on June 30, 2023, the day of the takeover, with the Festival signing the following day.
• No later than December 16, 2025, the court found that the Festival knew Honarkar was Terra’s lawful President and CEO. Yet neither the Festival nor Honarkar himself held keys to the restaurant, and the Festival neverrestored his possession — even after Honarkar asked, in August 2025, for permission to resume operating.
• Because the Festival never restored possession, the court held, Honarkar’s obligation to pay rent for January and February 2026 never arose — which meant the Three-Day Notice to Pay Rent or Quit the Festival later served overstated what was actually owed and could not support an eviction.
• The court named Terra Laguna Beach, Inc., the prevailing party, entitled to possession of the restaurant and to move for its attorney’s fees and costs.

On cross-examination, FOA President, Mr. Perry acknowledged that the Festival never sought reimbursement from MOM CA for any of this because, MOM’s founder, Mahender Makhijani, was in federal prison and, in his view, recovery efforts would have been futile. That is a remarkable admission from an organization that spent nearly three years treating MOM CA as Terra’s rightful occupant when they should have known better.

Questions That Still Demand Answers

None of this resolves the conflict-of-interest questions I raised three weeks ago, including Mayor Orgill’s wife working for Continuum Analytics, being appointed as Manager of Terra on July 1, and the roughly $500,000 settlement he received from a MOM affiliate. The 2022 consulting deal between Orgill and FOA’s attorney underscores just how intertwined their ties were.

The arbitrator’s findings removed one of the city’s few remaining outs: it can no longer say the Terra takeover was simply a private ownership dispute to be ignored. The record showed even back in 2023 that Terra was never MOMs to begin with. Laguna Beach residents are owed an explanation.

We also know Orgill worked closely with Mo from 2017 to 2020, even claiming credit for helping secure the 2019 Terra lease and then developing the site until the MO/Orgill business relationship soured. Mr. Orgill knew, or should have known that Terra was never part of the joint venture.

So why did a sitting council member, who had consulted for FOA in 2022 with direct access to FOA leadership, NOT advise urge them to read the JV agreement? A review would have shown that Terra was excluded from the JV , stopping an unlawful eviction before it started. Now both FOA, the City and perhaps Mr. Orgill too will face another court hearing in October, one brought forward by Mo that alleges fraud.