San Clemente · California
Pursuing uncommon strategies for unparalleled returns.
Cinnabar Holdings helps venture partners identify, develop, and execute strategic growth opportunities through advisory work and expansion capital.
50+ transactions · more than $100 million in value
A holding company built around real assets and mid-stage operating businesses.
Cinnabar acquires and operates residential, commercial, and industrial real estate, and invests in mid-stage organizations that need expansion capital. The firm’s focus includes transportation, wireless technology, and distressed multifamily properties of more than 50 units — with an emphasis on rehab and stabilization.
Cinnabar Holdings and its affiliated companies own, manage, and operate more than 600,000 square feet of residential, commercial, and industrial real estate in California, Arizona, and Nevada.
Firm membership
Timothy N. Robinson
Member
Beginning in 1988, Mr. Robinson began investing for his own portfolio, including investment properties throughout Los Angeles County. While building that portfolio he attended the University of Southern California, earning a Bachelor of Arts in Business Real Estate. He later consulted to the FDIC and the RTC on the management and disposition of non-performing loan and REO portfolios.
In early 1994 he joined Nextel Communications. He rose to Vice President, responsible for Nextel’s real estate development program for Southern California, Southern Nevada, and Arizona. With management’s agreement he continued acquiring and developing properties for his own account.
From 1995 he worked with Mr. Young on Southern California wireless-industry real estate development. That arrangement became a formal partnership in 2002, shortly after he left Nextel, when they formed Cinnabar Holdings, LLC. The firm acquired commercial retail and multifamily interests and minority stakes in mid-stage organizations across California and Nevada. In 2008 Mr. Robinson purchased all of Mr. Young’s interests in Cinnabar and its affiliates.
Today he manages the firm’s real estate assets and invests in mid-stage organizations that need expansion capital.
The Cinnabar advantage
Senior attention, operating experience, and speed.
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Senior-level attention
Members stay involved from initiation through negotiation and closing. Work is not handed off to junior staff.
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Real-world CXO experience
Members have founded, grown, and managed technology operating companies and real estate development firms — including projects built from dirt.
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Network of contacts
Relationships across venture capital, private equity, banks, corporate capital, financial institutions, and high-net-worth individuals, often used for business development as well as capital.
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Inventiveness
Creative alternatives for complex transaction issues, completed quickly to limit disruption.
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Trust
The firm holds to high ethical standards and protects the confidentiality of partners and investment targets.
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Investment focus
Opportunistic across sectors, historically weighted to real estate acquisition and development, now including second-stage operating ventures.
Recent opportunities and transactions
- Investment in a New York pharmaceutical development firm
- Assignment of a distressed stock interest in a Nevada corporation controlling 51 acres of entitled land in Victorville, California
- Minority interest in a San Diego property-services firm
- Controlling interest in a telecommunications development firm and cell-site operator
- Majority interest in a transportation company
- Distressed multifamily properties in Los Angeles, Orange, and San Diego Counties
- Advisory work with institutional asset managers on disposition of distressed multifamily product
The name
Cinnabar, a California history
Cinnabar — native red mercuric sulfide (HgS), the principal ore of mercury; also the artificial pigment of the same color.
In 1845 Captain Andrés Castillero of the Mexican Army, on a scouting patrol through what is now northern California, recognized that the hills might hold mineral deposits. Local Indians described a red rock they used for paint and a cave whose walls were solid with it. The rock was cinnabar — high-grade mercury ore. Castillero filed a claim. Mexican land law was contested and war with the United States was coming, so he sold his rights to Barron, Forbes Company, an English industrial firm. Organized mining at the renamed New Almaden Mines began in 1847 — California’s first large-scale mining venture.
Demand for quicksilver soared because mercury binds to gold and silver in refining. Under Henry W. Halleck, Mexican miners tunneled the hillside, roasted ore in furnaces, and ladled the metal into seventy-five-pound flasks. New Almaden was one of the Gold Rush era’s great industrial successes.
Cinnabar Holdings took the name as an analog for seeking niche opportunities that serve a broader market need, and as a nod to familial and emotional ties to the San Francisco Bay Area.
Source: New Almaden Mine (Calif.) Collection, 1845–1973, M0270, Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries.
Contact
Timothy N. Robinson
Member
San Clemente Office
128 Avenida Del Mar
Suite 2B
San Clemente, CA 92672
Phone (310) 801-9201