Santa Ana : Deputy City Manager Leaving for Private Job

Rex Swanson, deputy city manager for development and a key architect of the city’s extensive redevelopment program in the last few years, announced Tuesday that he will leave his job at the end of this month and go into private development.

Swanson, 43, said he would join a partnership developing a $40-million residential project near Los Angeles International Airport. Doty-Burton Associates, a Long Beach-based development company, is the general partner in the group, called Towers Realty Associates.

Swanson, who came to Santa Ana in 1981, said he is leaving for “the obvious financial reasons--the private sector’s more lucrative,” and because “the job is done here.”

“I think Santa Ana’s done a complete turnaround,” said Swanson, whose annual salary was $80,000 to $90,000, according to City Manager David N. Ream.

“They hired me to bring in some people who are really capable and turn the city around,” Swanson said. “We’ve done that. . . . I think it would be fair to say that, in ‘81, it was on its way to becoming Orange County’s only slum. It certainly isn’t that now.”

Ream said he had no timetable for hiring a new deputy city manager and did not know whether the city would conduct a national search or promote from within.

“We’re pleased for Rex that he’s moving on,” Ream said. “He’s made an outstanding contribution to the City of Santa Ana.”