Some homeowners fuss over the floor tile. Others obsess over kitchen appliances. Real-estate tycoon Mike Meldman prizes his custom-made tables for beer pong. “I am one of the best beer-pong players in the world,” Mr. Meldman says with a smile. Mr. Meldman has made millions peddling fun. He founded Discovery Land Co., a closely held company based in Scottsdale, Ariz., with 18 private resorts in exclusive vacation destinations. Sales at its properties last year exceeded $1 billion, according to the company. Mr. Meldman describes the resorts, with homes ranging from $1 million to $50 million, as a little like luxury “frat houses for families.” The same can be said for several of the six homes he personally owns in Los Angeles, Idaho, Montana, Arizona, the Bahamas and Los Cabos, Mexico.
Here he entertains for both business and pleasure. “A lot of these guys who made a lot of money don’t have fun and don’t know how to have fun. We show them how to have fun,” says Mr. Meldman, who is 57. Enormous birthday bashes have featured bands like Crosby, Stills & Nash and Chicago. Guests at Mr. Meldman’s Halloween party last year included singer Gwen Stefani and tennis star Serena Williams. Mr. Meldman typically spends four months of the year at his 1920s mansion in Beverly Hills. He bought the property for $8.5 million in 2008, when both sons from his first marriage were attending the University of Southern California. He then spent $2 million on renovations, turning an outside patio into a gym, “blowing up” the pool, tearing out the koi ponds and putting in a basketball court. Mr. Meldman travels among his other homes, all of which are in Discovery Land Co. developments. Over the years he’s had more than 25 houses, buying them at the start of a development and then sometimes selling them off as he starts new projects. The first of these was at his company’s first resort, called Estancia, a 384-lot development on 640 acres outside Scottsdale, Ariz., that he started in 1996. There, Mr. Meldman built himself a $1.5 million, three-bedroom house that he calls modest and considers his primary residence; his father lived there until his recent move into an assisted-living facility. In Los Cabos, he spent about $5 million building a nine-bedroom, red-tiled roofed house at the El Dorado development, where neighbors have included George Clooney and Rande Gerber. The house opens up in the back to an outdoor patio that leads to an infinity-edge pool, connected to a swimming pool below with a water slide. The lower pool has a “grotto” with a swim-up bar and flat-screen TVs. Inside, the game room, next to a large theater room, has a photo booth and a $6,000 beer-pong table that was custom made for Mr. Meldman with a side cooler to hold beer bottles and cups. There’s also a custom beer-pong table at his six-bedroom, 7,900-square-foot house at the Baker’s Bay Club in the Bahamas, where he sometimes spends New Year’s Eve. The house, which cost about $8 million to build, has a game room with a mahogany bar that seats 16. He spends most Christmases at his house at the Yellowstone Club development, located in Big Sky, Mont. It features classic mountain-lodge design with contemporary touches and cost about $3 million to build, he says. At the Gozzer Ranch development in Lake Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, Mr. Meldman built a four-bedroom, 4½-bathroom condo that measures 3,796 square feet. The property, which he says is worth about $3 million, features expansive stone decks off the master bedroom and living room with views of Lake Coeur d’Alene. Born in Milwaukee, Mr. Meldman grew up as a self-described jock in a one-story tract house in Phoenix, where his father worked for an insurance company and his mother was a book reviewer and travel writer. After high school, he chose to attend Stanford University. There, he was a history major and a member of Theta Delta Chi. “I was the epitome of a frat boy,” he says. After graduating in 1981, he got a job dealing blackjack at Harrah’s in Lake Tahoe, Nev. Soon after, he got into commercial real estate, selling farmland in Fremont, Calif., from 1981 to 1984, just as property prices in Silicon Valley started to take off. With the money he made as a broker, he bought a 300-acre ranch in Portola Valley and planned a development, now called Blue Oaks. It took him 18 years to get past opponents of the project, who were concerned the land was in a wildlife corridor and on the San Andreas fault. “I got a Ph.D. in planning,” he jokes. He also markets his projects as environmentally friendly since ultra-high-end buyers prefer low-density communities. In order to avoid more protracted battles and to gain the support of the local community, Mr. Meldman formed Discovery Land Co. Foundation, a charity that supports foster-family programs in the areas around the resorts. That foundation is headed by Christy Nichols, whom he met at Stanford and married in 1986. Together they have two sons, Hunter, now 28, and Will, now 25. The couple divorced in 1992. “Mike was always gregarious and fun, and spent time with all kinds of people,” says Ms. Nichols, 52. The Meldmans’ sons have had a big influence on the developments. The resorts have no requirement that golfers wear collared shirts, since Hunter and Will always hated dressing up. Golf courses at the resorts were initially stocked with snacks at every hole. (They’ve since evolved into “comfort stations” with “endless treats” and often on-site chefs.) “Back when I started this people thought I was crazy—a renegade,” he says. He made sure parents could get a break, too: At Discovery’s Gozzer Ranch, in Coeur d’Alene, for example, Mr. Meldman sat on the boat and drank beer while an instructor taught his sons how to wakeboard. Mr. Meldman says he was able to enjoy the experience instead of stressing about teaching them himself. Mr. Meldman continues to break ground on new real-estate ventures. He recently sold his five-bedroom, 5,100-square-foot house at Discovery Land Co.’s Kūkiʻo Golf and Beach Club in Hawaii for $7.1 million. He also sold his 5,516-square-foot, five-bedroom home at the Madison Club in La Quinta, Calif., for $4.2 million in August. Currently he’s building two new homes: a condo in the old Makena Hotel that is part of a new Discovery project on Maui; and a new, “barnlike,” multilevel farmhouse with a gym, theater, bowling alley and organic garden, at a Discovery development in the works called Silo Ridge Field Club in New York’s Hudson Valley. Twice married and divorced, Mr. Meldman was publicly branded a womanizer by his high-profile ex-girlfriend, “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” star Brandi Glanville in her book, “Drinking & Tweeting.” Both Mr. Meldman and Ms. Glanville declined to comment on this matter. Now Mr. Meldman and actress Monica Gambee, his girlfriend of four years (or “Baby Mama”, as he puts it), have a 2-year-old son named Max. Max likes to watch episodes of “Mickey Mouse Clubhouse” with his father every morning at 6 a.m. “We still have parties but maybe not as long and not as often,” says Ms. Gambee, who is 38. As his son Hunter jokes, Mr. Meldman is “a very civilized frat boy now.” Write to Nancy Keates at nancy.keates@wsj.com This article originally appeared on The Wall Street Journal.