The makeup of The Irvine Company’s core executive team will end 2007 looking much different than it started the year.
The Newport Beach-based company,the county’s dominant real estate owner and developer,has seen big changes this year, including shifts at the top spots of its residential, office, government affairs and resort operations.
New faces have taken over what many believe to be the company’s three highest-level positions, besides those of Chairman Donald Bren and Chief Executive Michael McKee.
Dan Young, a former Santa Ana mayor, this month was tapped to lead the company’s business of planning and developing housing projects.
He replaces the retiring Joe Davis, who has headed up the company’s sizable housing development efforts since 1997, including projects such as Shady Canyon and Crystal Cove.
Also joining the executive team is new hire Gregory Lindstrom, who, like McKee, is a lawyer brought on board from Latham & Watkins LLP. He’s set to be the head of the company’s legal department and report to his former colleague McKee.
Lindstrom already is considered an Irvine Co. insider, as McKee was before he joined the company. Lindstrom handled litigation for the Irvine Co. in a number of high-profile cases while at Latham & Watkins and knows Bren well.
The changes are the latest in a series.
Rick Gilchrist, the former president and co-chief executive of Los Angeles-based Maguire Properties Inc. was hired to run the Irvine Co.’s office division in mid-2006.
Gilchrist now heads the company’s investment properties group, following January’s announcement that longtime executive Clarence Barker was stepping back to become an adviser to Bren.
Young, Lindstrom and Gilchrist’s management styles and skills differ from their predecessors, said Larry Thomas, head of corporate communications, who himself is retiring next month. But there shouldn’t be too much difference seen in the company’s core operations, he said.
“I don’t believe the outside world will notice any significant changes,” said Thomas, a 20-year Irvine Co. veteran who announced his retirement this month.
Thomas, a confidant of Bren, is seeing his spot filled by Tony Russo, who’s been named the company’s group senior vice president of corporate affairs.
The last time the Irvine Co. saw this much executive-level change was more than five years ago, when Investment Properties Chairman Richard Sim left, along with Gary Hunt, who had spent nearly 25 years as Bren’s head of government affairs.
Only Bren and McKee remain among the company’s top dozen or so executive stalwarts from a decade ago or more.
Then as now, key decisions still come from the top.
Bren and McKee,who was promoted from chief operating officer to chief executive in June,form a two-person operations management committee that oversees all aspects of the company.
The promotion of Young is getting the most buzz in real estate circles.
He joined the Irvine Co. in 1999, most recently serving as executive vice president of entitlement and public affairs.
In addition to his eight years as Santa Ana’s mayor, Young counts 20 years of experience in commercial and residential development and doing consulting work.
His promotion signals to some that the job of getting Irvine Co.’s numerous housing projects approved by governments is as important these days as the developimg itself.
Young already was considered a key part of the company’s inner circle by some local politicos.
In 2005, Adam Probolsky, president of political consultant and pollster Probolsky Research in Laguna Hills, went as far as to call him the “most important man at Irvine Co. besides Don Bren.”
“Young is in charge of everything that touches government and politics in any way,” Probolsky said.
Young’s role “is even more (pronounced) now,” said Probolsky, who also serves as a planning commissioner for the city of Irvine.
For a developer the size of the Irvine Co., “You need someone politically astute in both local and statewide affairs,” he said.
The promotion of Young, Russo and departure of Thomas, also a key government player, raises the question of how political issues will be handled.
Young will keep a hand in the company’s government relations. Many of his previous day-to-day duties,like lobbying and dealing with trade associations,now fall to Russo.
