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- People and entities linked to Darkhorse Tactical Investments of Connecticut have snapped up more than 100 acres of land within Joshua Tree National Park boundaries since 2021. Several of those involved in the land purchases have ties to the hotel industry.
- Joshua Tree is among the 10 most popular national parks in the U.S. but has no lodging aside from campgrounds within its borders.
- Environmentalists and nearby residents are concerned that potential development by the new land owners could affect the fragile desert environment in the area, long known as Whispering Pines.
JOSHUA TREE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. — The vistas are sprawling and unspoiled. Mountains rim blue-sky horizons, and scrub brush scattered across the rocky desert hills sustain mule deer, bighorn sheep and other wildlife.
Known as Whispering Pines, this roughly 2-square-mile wildland within the boundaries of Joshua Tree National Park was once dotted with rustic vacation cabins. Most are gone now, wiped away by wildfire, floodwaters or simply the passage of time, making it a quiet refuge within the park.
Now, however, a spate of construction activity and lot sales with links to a Connecticut-based real estate investment firm called Darkhorse Tactical Investments has alarmed nearby residents and environmentalists, who worry about how potential development might affect the fragile desert environment.
A Times review of online and public records found that people and entities linked to Darkhorse have acquired more than 100 acres in and around Whispering Pines since 2021. Several of those involved in the land purchases have ties to the hotel and hospitality industry, the records show. All of them either declined to talk to The Times or didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Hotel industry consultants say Whispering Pines’ location within park boundaries makes it an enviable spot for lodging. Annual visits to Joshua Tree reached nearly 3.3 million in 2023, more than double what it was a decade before, making it among the 10 most popular national parks in the U.S.
What’s more, Joshua Tree has no lodging besides campgrounds within its borders, unlike other popular national parks including Yosemite, Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon.
“There’s obviously a demand for this kind of project,” said Alan Reay, president of Atlas Hospitality Group, which specializes in hotel sales.
Channing Henry, managing director and head of the U.S. practice for consulting firm PKF Hospitality Group, said Joshua Tree could use more lodging at any price point — be it four-star suites or $150 cabins.
But the prospect of any development in the area has raised fears of environmental degradation and water table depletion in one of the most ecologically sensitive corners of the park. At an elevation of roughly 4,600 feet, the Whispering Pines area is considered a climate refuge where certain plants and animals may be able to survive even as the surrounding environs become too hot and dry.
The rocky hills serve as a corridor for bighorn sheep to travel from the high desert to the forests of the San Bernardino Mountains, said local wilderness guide and nearby resident Travis Puglisi.
“I don’t want people punching wells,” he said, citing the potential impact on wildlife. More human activity also raises the risk of fire in the pinyon-juniper woodlands, he added.
Walter Marienschek, who owns North American Drilling in Yucca Valley, said he drilled a well on one of the Whispering Pines properties in 2022 and was later asked to drill more wells. But the landowners declined to disclose the intended use, he said, which he needed to properly calculate the size of the wells. He ultimately cut ties with the owners.
The Times’ review of property records found that people and entities with links to Darkhorse Tactical Investments have acquired at least 22 separate parcels in the area since 2021, with most of the land purchased by limited liability corporations based in Delaware.
Together, the 22 parcels totaling 117 acres sold for more than $2.9 million, and typically at prices well above their assessed value. For instance, one five-acre lot, purchased by Paradise Ravine LLC for $225,000 in 2022, had last sold for $6,000 in 2004 and was assessed at $8,199 in 2023.
Joshua Tree National Park officials say they don’t regulate construction on privately held land such as the Whispering Pines lots. The land is located in an unincorporated part of San Bernardino County, which issued a building permit in September to Desert Sands 91 LLC for an 870-square-foot factory-built cabin that was recently placed on the site.
Building permit applications to put two more factory-built cabins on nearby sites were submitted in November 2023 and remain under review, according to county spokesman David Wert.
One of the permits was submitted by an LLC called “And That’s That” and another named “Oak Fam JTree.” Wert said the county had no information on possible additional building plans.
Residents and environmentalists say they’ve been frustrated by their inability to get any information on future plans for the area from the National Park Service and local authorities — or the new landowners themselves.
“These guys are hush-hush and secretive,” Marienschek said of the owners, “like they’re in a spy agency or something.”
Homesteaders in the park
When Joshua Tree was first designated as a national monument in 1936, tens of thousands of acres remained in private hands. Many homesteaders who had filed for the land in the 1920s and 30s were grandfathered in, according to Todd Luce, a UC Riverside lecturer who co-authored a report on property in the park that hasn’t been released to the public.
“So one of the great missions of officials at Joshua Tree was acquiring the land within the boundaries of their own park,” Luce said.
In the late 1950s, investors snapped up land in the monument, naming it “Whispering Pines,” according to a separate report on the park. Some built homes, but the environment made living expensive. Fierce storms washed out roads, sometimes cutting off access to properties.
In 1979, the National Park Service completed what Luce described as a court-approved buyout and acquired 425 acres of the subdivision.
While many took the money and decamped, some stayed. One property owner who held out was famed furniture-maker Sam Maloof, though Luce said it’s unclear if the house was ever visited by the craftsman.
For decades, the remaining privately held lands in the area were primarily owned by families who would visit to camp or take in the serene scenery, locals say. Then a new set of owners came in.
The road to Whispering Pines
The Whispering Pines site is reached by a dirt road maintained by the park service for its administrative needs about six miles off Highway 62, on the northwestern side of the 1,242-square mile national park. Vehicle entry is restricted by a locked gate that can be opened only with a code provided by the park service.
According to nearby residents, large trucks towing construction equipment began rumbling up the road — which is closed to the public — to place a factory-built cabin on a lot in October. Work crews also widened and graded the road, locals say, which winds through sensitive habitat for Joshua trees, desert tortoises and bighorn sheep.
“There’s somebody going out there just because they have a bunch of money and don’t care about the area and are making a big widened road just because they want to,” said Lori Portillo, a resident of nearby Yucca Valley.
Portillo once owned several lots in Whispering Pines, but said she sold her property to a conservation group so it would be protected. “Some of us are worried about the place,” she said.
Landowners and crews working for them can use the park service’s administrative roads provided they have permits, officials say.
Shortly after locals expressed concerns in October, park officials stopped activity on the road and launched an investigation into possible violations of the terms of a permit issued to a contractor to use it, park officials said. The permit was suspended pending the conclusion of the investigation, officials said.
Still, nearby residents have reported seeing construction machinery, including an excavator, being transported up the road to Whispering Pines as recently as late January.
Some landowners lack permits to use administrative roads or have permits that have expired, Park Supt.Jane Rodgers said in a statement. Those people will be notified to either apply for permits or renew expired ones, she said.
Brendan Cummings, conservation director for the Center for Biological Diversity, said the Park Service can’t provide a right-of-way to something that “would fundamentally change the character” of the area without the project going through lengthy environmental review processes, which he said never happened.
The new neighbors
The Times’ review of property records found that several of the LLCs that bought parcels in Whispering Pines are linked to Peter Nawara, who online records state is managing partner of Darkhorse.
Nawara formerly worked at Starwood Capital Group, a global real estate firm that owns several hotel brands. He also previously sat on the advisory board of the Cornell University Baker Program in Real Estate.
Reached by telephone, Nawara said the construction activity “is definitely not a development” but declined to comment further. John Woodruff and Saheer Mathrani, two other partners in Darkhorse, didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Since receiving media inquiries about their affiliation with Darkhorse, all three partners have either deleted their LinkedIn pages or removed references to the firm. Still, RocketReach, a private company that maintains a database of professional contact information, lists Nawara and Woodruff as partners in Darkhorse. ContactOut, a similar platform, lists Mathrani as a Darkhorse partner.
Four of the 22 Whispering Pines-area parcels were purchased by Nawara, Woodruff or Mathrani, and one other by a former business associate. The remaining lots were purchased by 17 separate Delaware-based LLCs with names including Paradise Ravine, Priderock Mountain and Evergreen Land Co.
Mailing addresses for 12 of those 17 LLCs provided to the San Bernardino County assessor can be linked to partners in Darkhorse, according to public records.
Of the other five, one provided a mailing address of a residence at the Four Seasons Surf Club in Surfside, Fla., that was previously owned by former WeWork CEO Sandeep Mathrani, who sold the home for $21 million in 2023. The four remaining LLCs listed the address of Sandeep Mathrani’s former business partner, Richard Pesin. Pesin declined to comment.
A relationship between Sandeep Mathrani and Darkhorse partner Saheer Mathrani couldn’t be confirmed, but Sandeep has a son named Saheer, according to biographical materials published by the International Council of Shopping Centers, a trade group.
Online records also show that persons named Sandeep Mathrani and Saheer Mathrani have previously shared two New York addresses, both of them co-op units formerly owned by Sandeep Mathrani.
Sandeep Mathrani now oversees real estate investments as a partner in the private equity firm Sycamore Partners. He didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Two LLCs that purchased property in the Whispering Pines area were previously controlled by Sophia Kanavos, business records state. Kanavos’ parents founded New York-based Flag Luxury, which develops luxury hotels and residences.
Kanavos, who worked as an originations analyst for Starwood Capital Group in the fall of 2021, when the properties were purchased, divested herself from those LLCs in 2022, business transfer documents show.
Flag Luxury’s public relations representative said neither the company nor Kanavos have ever been involved with any development project in Joshua Tree National Park, noting that Kanavos transferred her interest prior to the start of any construction.
Starwood Capital Group sold Starwood Hotels and Resorts to Marriott in 2016 but continues to own several hotel companies and is now reviving its Starwood Hotels brand. Starwood “has nothing to do with the Joshua Tree project,” said spokesman Tom Johnson of communications firm Abernathy MacGregor.
Nine of the 22 properties were purchased using deeds of trust, in which the property owner gives an interest in the land to a lender to secure a loan from the buyer until full payment is made.
Two of those deeds of trust were signed on behalf of two LLCs by John Robert Ceriale, a 2023 graduate of Cornell University’s hospitality program, and whose father John V. Ceriale manages the hotel investments of Blackstone Real Estate Advisors. Neither responded to messages seeking comment.
Wanted: Rooms with a park view
National parks have surged in popularity in recent years, and large hotel operators have taken note.
Marriott, for example, recently acquired Postcard Cabins, which runs lodging near national parks. Hyatt has partnered with glamping pioneer Under Canvas, which operates 13 outdoor resorts near national parks and other recreation destinations. And Hilton now works with AutoCamp to provide AirStream accommodations at nine locations, including Joshua Tree.
Starwood Capital Group, which led a second funding round for Postcard Cabins in 2019, also helped launch a hotel brand, Field & Stream Lodge Co., to provide lower- to mid-price lodging around national parks and other outdoor recreation areas.
The Wall Street Journal reported in 2023 that Field & Stream Lodge planned to target Joshua Tree as one of its 125 U.S. markets, but a person with knowledge of the company said there are no current plans to do so.
PKF’s Channing said that while Joshua Tree needs lodging, “community acceptance is absolutely tantamount to the success of any hospitality operation.”
“Anybody entering a market as underserved and beloved as Joshua Tree should be very careful to hear community concerns and not try to bring in something that is too far afield from what the place currently is,” she said.
The Mojave Desert Land Trust, which has been buying up land in the area to eventually transfer to the national park, sought to purchase the parcel where the prefabricated cabin was recently placed but found itself outmatched.
“We were quite close to completing a transaction for the specific land in question,” said Cody Hanford, deputy executive director and chief conservation officer, in an email. “But the broker backed out and they ultimately sold for much, much more than our original fair market offer.”
On a crisp morning in October, the parcel where construction had been taking place provided a jolting contrast to its serene surroundings. The leveled-out lot was littered with equipment: forklifts, a generator, light stands, port-a-potties and a hand-washing station. Just off the road were deep grooves in the dirt where it looked like vehicles had backed up into the vegetation.
Puglisi, the naturalist who runs a guiding service, shook his head at the sight. He feared the activity will lower the water table, making it less available to bighorn sheep, tortoises, coyotes and mule deer that call the area home.
“If it were true that they’re building a house and it’s like, ‘my little getaway,’ well, great,” he said. “But if you’re building a getaway for one percenters that’s allowing all kinds of commerce and drawing down the water table that is absolutely crucial to this ecosystem, that’s problematic.”
Times researcher Scott Wilson contributed to this report.
