New Head of CCDC a ‘Velvet Steamroller’ Among Bulldozers

There Pam Hamilton sat, and sat, and sat. For eight months she listened patiently as attorneys explained to her and her fellow jurors the complexities of an antitrust suit.

What she didn’t know was that another drama was unfolding in the judge’s chambers, and it had nothing at all to do with the legalities of the case.

There, a headstrong Gerald Trimble, the top official of the fledging Centre City Development Corp.--the agency given the high-profile task of revitalizing a dying downtown--was pleading for her, literally.

What Trimble wanted was for the judge to let Hamilton off the jury so she could take over as his top assistant, a job for which she had applied.

“I talked to the judge and told him it was important to San Diego and the community to have her working at CCDC,” Trimble recalled. “He said, ‘Let me think about it.’ I had another meeting with him and he finally said OK. Then I told Pam, ‘You’re hired. I talked to the judge.’ She didn’t say anything; there was this huge silence.”

That was six years ago, and as it turns out, the jury met for 20 months only to have the trial ended by a settlement. “They are kind enough to invite me to their reunions every year,” Hamilton said, chuckling.

Invitations are something Hamilton will probably be receiving more often now that she has been named to succeed Trimble. In the process, she not only has taken over one of the most successful redevelopment agencies in the country, and one of the most-watched agencies in the city, but has also rocketed to a post that, at $95,000 a year, makes her the highest paid woman in government service in the county.

The invitations will come not only because of her position but also because few outside the closed world of redevelopment and high-ranking City Hall bureaucrats know Hamilton, who since 1982 has labored alongside Trimble to help turn downtown around. And they want to find out who she is.

Talk to those who know her and have worked with her and they say there’s a tenacity within Pam Hamilton that isn’t apparent on the surface. It boils just underneath.

That is one significant contrast with her predecessor and mentor, Gerald Trimble, a determined bulldog who scared everyone with his bark and wasn’t afraid to use it.

No, Hamilton won’t be like that, even she herself acknowledges. But don’t take that as a sign of weakness.

“I used to call her my velvet steamroller,” said Ron Bradley, in praise. Bradley should know. He worked both as her peer and later as her boss when Hamilton was essentially a one-person housing and redevelopment department for the city of La Mesa, one stop in her more than 20-year career.

“She is very direct and very candid and very personable,” said Bradley, who today is city manager of Oceanside. “She thinks what she’s doing is important . . . she makes things happen.”

And, says Trimble, the ultimate redevelopment tough guy, admiringly, “She is as tough as I am. She can’t be intimidated . . . she will go nose to nose. She can be tough.”

The irony is that Hamilton ended up in the redevelopment business at all. As a kid she dreamed of being a rancher in Montana. Later she wanted to be an elementary school teacher and, while in college, her plans to become a professor were quashed, she said, when she didn’t show enough deference to a male-dominated interview board.

She was born in Miami 43 years ago, the youngest daughter of parents who divorced when she was still a baby. She never moved and was raised in a modest home by her mother, a woman with an eighth-grade education who worked as a housekeeper. Although her mother didn’t have much money, she did have a strong desire that Pam do well in school.

“We didn’t have financial resources to send me to college so it was very important for her that I do well in high school to earn scholarships,” she said. She did.

Graduated at Top of Class

She graduated at the top of her senior class of 435 students at Jackson Senior High School. That accomplishment provided her with a state-paid ticket to Tallahassee and Florida State University. Again, she shone academically, graduating magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in political science. She had married while in college, and now she wanted to become a political science professor, a route she had carefully planned in hopes it would lead her to Johns Hopkins University and an eventual doctorate degree.

Again, though, she needed money, and again she competed for a scholarship, this time a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship. But there was a problem, and she knew it immediately. “My entire interview for the fellowship had to do with my husband and his educational objectives, and wouldn’t it be a problem if I were better educated than he,” she said. “They really didn’t focus on my career or objectives. And, in 1965, I answered those questions as best I could. I should have been competitive for that scholarship, and I didn’t receive one.” (She later divorced and is now single.)

Florida State, though, came through and provided a scholarship that she used to earn a master’s degree in political science. It was then, almost by accident, that the turning point in her life came. She was approached by the federal department of Housing and Urban Development.

How would she like to go to Washington and work for the huge federal agency as a management intern, they asked. She went, and her career, which has now peaked in San Diego, was set.

But those days in Miami, when she and her mother had less than many, left its impressions.

“I was really lucky growing up, even though we were poor. We had a home, as modest as it was. I always had shelter, I always had food and I always had clothing . . . if you don’t have those three basic needs satisfied, you’re not going to be able to excel. So I’ve always had a strong feeling that that’s the kind of thing that everybody needs to really get a fair start,” she said.

It also left her with mettle. “My background makes me have a lot of empathy for people who have less than I do. On the other hand, I also have a real appreciation for what hard work can earn an individual. . . . I don’t mean to get schmaltzy about it, I really feel that I had all the opportunity I could ever want, even though I did not have financial resources, and to me that’s what this country is all about.”

As it turned out, the federal government was a good place for a woman to be in the late 1960s. It provided plenty of opportunities and mobility. For 10 years Hamilton worked with the agency in a variety of positions and programs: Housing Rehabilitation, Community Block Grants, Urban Renewal, federally assisted housing programs, Model Cities. Some were remnants and hallmarks of the old War on Poverty days, others were newer bureaucratic reincarnations.

She left federal employment in 1977, and worked briefly for a redevelopment consulting firm in Los Angeles, before becoming La Mesa’s director of housing and redevelopment. From there it was to CCDC as second highest ranking administrator.

Part of CCDC’s success, say those who work there, is its relatively small size, and for someone like Hamilton, it put her on the front line helping negotiate with developers, dealing with property owners and a variety of other “hands-on” work. In the past five years, more than $1 billion in new development has occurred or is in the midst of being negotiated within the 325 acres that encompass CCDC’s domain.

Sets Own Style

The agency was dominated by Trimble, who until earlier this year was the agency’s first and only executive director. And though Hamilton was a critical element in CCDC’s success, she stayed mainly in Trimble’s shadow. With Trimble it seemed you either liked him or you didn’t, and some on the City Council and some of downtown’s new residents felt he was excessively secretive and thin-skinned to criticism. Hamilton is very familiar with the image, and although she defends Trimble’s style, it’s clear she has no intention of imitating it.

“I think, in terms of Jerry--not in defense of him but in explanation--he came here at a time when nothing had been accomplished and everything was a big ticket item,” Hamilton said. “There was a lot of doubt about whether or not this redevelopment program was feasible. It was a very aggressive redevelopment program and I think there was a lot of concern by him that all the glitches that just happen in this business . . . not become front page headlines every time they occurred, because it would just reinforce the concern about whether this program would ever really get off the ground.”

Today, with Horton Plaza in place, a boom in high-rise office development, a successful housing program and a sustained local economy, it’s a different and much more healthy downtown, she said. “I think we’re working from a far different perspective today. We’re working from a base of consensus that wasn’t there five years ago,” she said.

Describing her working style, she said: “I like to be open with people. I think if people understand some of the constraints we’re working with, we’re going to work them out better. There’s very little information I keep confidential.” Among things in the off-limits category would be financial data provided by developers, conversations held during negotiations and inquiries made by developers about specific projects.

The biggest problem facing downtown? Hamilton doesn’t hesitate. It’s the homeless. “I’m concerned about them as individuals and I’m concerned about their impact on the development of downtown,” she said.

And although developers have not shied away because of the homeless from the redevelopment areas controlled by CCDC, Hamilton fears it could become a problem when, as expected, the city expands the redevelopment area to include much of downtown, including Centre City East, where many homeless now congregate.

Decisions have to be made to build and locate long-term facilities that provide not only shelter but also mental health services. That will be both expensive and controversial, but Hamilton said the city has little choice. “I think what we need in the long term are rather substantial facilities . . . we just can’t warehouse them. We need mental health facilities and they have to be residential in character. They are expensive and they have to be somewhere. Those decisions have to be made . . . they are key decisions of the whole redevelopment program,” Hamilton said.

Without such solutions, she said, the city’s ability to continue attracting people to downtown housing and keep the revitalization going will be severely jeopardized.

“No one wants to walk down a street and see a homeless person who’s really down and out. It’s a very heart-wrenching experience, and you don’t want to put yourself in that environment 24 hours a day. Nobody does,” she said. “You want neighborhoods where people aren’t having to deal with social issues right at their front door.”

A funny thing happened on Hamilton’s way to the top. The people in charge of finding a replacement for Trimble, who quit in February to work at the University of Southern California, at first didn’t want her.

With Trimble gone and Hamilton working as his temporary replacement, the CCDC board of directors embarked on a nationwide search. In spring, they announced that they had reduced the candidates to three, led by San Jose’s redevelopment chief, Frank Taylor. Hamilton, who had Trimble’s recommendation, wasn’t among them.

But Taylor later backed out, and the two others dropped from contention. The search, led by CCDC President John Davies, started up again. All the time Hamilton remained and continued leading the agency. Publicly, she took the news gracefully, never letting her true feelings show.

“Your initial reaction when it happens to you, at least mine was, to turn on your heel, take your briefcase and close the door and never come back,” she said. “I was pretty upset. I can recognize from the board’s perspective their wanting to bring someone in from another city who’s had experience elsewhere. I could understand them having some interest in a candidate from the outside, but that wasn’t my perspective.”

But she hung in, carried on by her steadfast belief in her ability and concern over leaving the agency in chaos. “I know it sounds sappy but I really care about this program . . . I’ve worked so hard at it myself, I really didn’t want to see the corporation hurt in any way by the lack of continuity.

“I obviously had to get some emotions behind me in terms of how I felt about what had happened to me personally,” Hamilton said. “I knew if I stayed I wasn’t going to reduce my marketability . . . so I stayed. And it’s a curious change of events as it turns out.”

In late September, Davies announced that Hamilton was selected by his replacement committee. But the next day, an embarrassed Davies had to call off the official announcement because of last-minute snags in Hamilton’s proposed contract. She was hungry, but not that hungry. Ten days ago, it became official, with the board approving her selection unanimously and Davies making a crack about her tenacity in negotiating with him.

Now the job is hers. She commands a staff of 22 and a budget of $45 million a year. If the City Council decides to expand the downtown redevelopment area, CCDC’s territory will grow from 325 acres to 1,200 acres. What is Hamilton’s vision for this area? At the moment she has no grand plan. By her own admission, she is a highly detailed person, often keenly focused on the little things she says can derail projects and plans if allowed to go awry.

“My vision is so specific because I’m here day to day and I tend to be project-oriented because I know that’s really how things happen, is that you have to take the building blocks and build them one by one,” she said. “Downtown won’t be finished in 10 years. It’s a very large area, and assuming the consensus remains that redevelopment of downtown is something the citizens of San Diego want to support, it be will a very long-term effort.”

Outlook on the Issues

The following are Pam Hamilton’s views on some downtown issues:

ARCHITECTURE: “I think we’ll see dramatically better architecture. I might even hazard world-class architecture. I think the entire San Diego region has awakened to that issue. There’s a real concern by everybody, not just the architectural profession, about the way buildings look and how the environment works. I don’t think we’ll go back to the ‘50s and ‘60s environment that so many of us grew up in.”

HIGH-RISES: “I honestly believe the debate is drawing to a close. I believe we have achieved a lot of consensus on that issue. . . . The debate now will be sub-area by sub-area. Generally, there is a consensus that we want to spread development more horizontally throughout downtown than just vertically. You can capitalize on the development that’s going occur better if you have more but smaller projects news

than if you have a few very large projects. In the core area, there will still be very dense development” but not as dense as some had wanted.

GASLAMP QUARTER: “Height here has become a matter of debate. I support a modest height limit here.”

OPENNESS: “I try to take cognizance of who cares about an issue, who wants to be in on it. I try to notify people when there is an issue on the (CCDC) agenda that I know they have an interest in, even if it’s not a direct interest.”

UNDERGROUND TOXIC PLUME DOWNTOWN: “It’s the bane of our existence. We thought just getting people to want to live downtown was the only problem between us and a successful housing program, and now that we’ve turned the corner, we find something that really is beyond our control. We can manage the hydrocarbon plume, I’m not concerned about our ability to manage it from a technical aspect, but it’s going to be a big drain on the budget. These are funds I would much rather spend somewhere else. We will attempt to recoup the money from the sources of the plume, but we’ve chosen, so far at least, to attempt to manage that plume so that redevelopment can continue to occur down there.”

PROFESSIONAL WOMAN: “I have a very professional image at work. I treat men and women who come into my office the same. I think they forget very rapidly whether I’m male or female. I’ve certainly had some people who can’t get past it and I just let their remarks roll off my back. Usually the people I’m dealing with want something from us, and so the leverage is actually on my side of the table, which always helps in any negotiations.

“I think perhaps people respond to me in a more relaxed manner. Typically I’m able to establish very good rapport with people I’m dealing with. I don’t know if that’s because I’m a woman or not.”

CCDC STAFF SIZE: “We may have to expand our staff, but it will be a very considered decision. I really want to take it a step at a time. I like having a small staff. . . . I’m very hands-on and I really don’t want to be head of a corporation where personnel is something I have to deal with eight hours a day. . . . I (don’t want to be) removed from the actual negotiations of projects and solutions, and resolving issues, what I see as the rewarding work.”