Nielsen Leaves Executive Post at Irvine Co.
Thomas H. Nielsen said Friday he is retiring as a vice chairman of the Irvine Co. and may seek a job in incoming Gov. Pete Wilson’s Administration.
Nielsen, 60, will remain on the company’s board of directors and its powerful executive committee. He said he is leaving voluntarily and remains on good terms with Chairman Donald L. Bren.
Bren said in a memo to employees Friday that “in the history of the Irvine Co., few people have made more major contributions” than Nielsen. The company is a major force in Orange County, owning more than 60,000 acres, much of it still undeveloped.
Nielsen said he had discussed leaving the company with Bren for several years now and the decision was mutual. “I did not resign the position. I simply agreed with Donald that now would be the time . . . to change my status at the company,” Nielsen said.
He added he hasn’t discussed a specific job in Wilson’s Administration but has merely said he is available. Nielsen has long had an interest in civic groups and public policy, and is rumored to be interested in the job of secretary of business, transportation and housing.
A Democrat, Nielsen became chairman of the California Economic Development Corp. under Republican Gov. George Deukmejian. He has known Wilson since Nielsen’s days as a San Diego home builder when Wilson was mayor of that city.
Wilson, although he is a Republican, on Friday appointed Orange County Democrat Maureen DiMarco to be secretary for child development and education.
The Irvine Co., moreover, has longstanding ties to Wilson through Bren, a major Republican political donor, and other top executives.
Nielsen played down those ties Friday.
“If I am ruled out because of my association with the Irvine Co., so be it,” he said. “If I am selected, I am sure people will attribute it to all kinds of things.”
Nielsen, a Newport Beach resident, started on the fast track at the Irvine Co. in 1978, but his control of the nation’s largest private urban landowner began to diminish in the mid-1980s, when Bren removed him from the president’s job and made him one of three vice chairmen.
Nielsen was a consummate public relations expert at the company, which is both disliked and admired for the power it wields in Orange County and in Sacramento. He often represented the big landowner company at public events, a task that the shy Bren and some of his other top executives are said to be uncomfortable with.
Nielsen was a San Diego home builder in 1977 when he met former Irvine Co. President Peter Kremer while skiing in Idaho. Kremer hired him as a vice president and when Kremer had a falling out with Bren, Nielsen replaced Kremer in 1983.
Bren was especially concerned that the company, which he bought control of in 1983, had needlessly angered residents and wrecked its public image. As president, Nielsen was sent out on the chicken-dinner circuit to mollify them.
Nielsen remained president until 1986, when he lost the job, most of his staff and his operational responsibilities, and moved to the post of vice chairman, where he became a full-time spokesman and the company’s expert on public-policy issues such as transportation and water.
“I enjoyed the new job,” Nielsen said Friday. “You enjoy the role they hand you or you move on.”
Nielsen, a native of Fullerton with a background in civil engineering, said he has no business interests outside the company and hasn’t thought about whether to pursue a new career in business if a government appointment doesn’t come through.
He said he might resign his remaining company posts if they pose a conflict of interest with a government job.
Now seemed a good time to retire, Nielsen said, since the company is slowing down in the midst of a real estate slump. The company last month laid off 40 of its 370 employees and said it faced a cash flow crunch because the home builders who are its biggest customers are no longer buying land. The company also said it would not launch new projects, although it would continue working on projects already under way.
