Bramalea California Loses Its Top Executive : Home building: Peter Perrin, who had been firm’s president since 1980, will start his own business.
Peter Perrin, president of Bramalea California since 1980, has resigned to start his own development business.
Perrin joined Canadian-based Bramalea Ltd. in 1974 and founded the California division 12 years ago. Bramalea is a major Southland builder specializing in luxury homes. In January it opened a project of $1-million to $2-million semi-custom homes in the Irvine Co.’s Newport Coast community.
Leon Swails, president of Marlborough Development Corp., a subsidiary of Bramalea California, has been selected to succeed Perrin.
Swails could not be reached for comment Monday, but a spokesman for Bramalea Ltd. at the company’s corporate offices in Toronto said no other management or operational changes are planned.
Perrin is the second president of a major Southland residential building firm to resign in the last month. John Yelverton resigned Oct. 19 as president of Arvida of California--developer of Coto de Caza and the proposed Talega Valley planned community in San Juan Capistrano.
Perrin said Monday that his resignation, which took effect Friday, stemmed from a “reappraisal of the things I wanted out of the next four years . . . (and the realization) that my heart was no longer in it.”
A Bramalea spokesman said Perrin’s departure had nothing to do with slow sales at the Newport Coast project or with financial difficulties that the Canadian arm of the company has been having. Bramalea has been hurt by a recession in Canada that has stalled home sales. The company is restructuring its operations after missing a payment on its bank debt this summer.
Bramalea California’s operations have been profitable, company officials said. A spokesman called Perrin’s resignation “an amicable parting” and said sales for Bramalea California and its Marlborough subsidiary should total about 700 homes in 1992, up from 617 in 1991. The two companies together own nearly 6,000 residential lots in Southern California, mainly in Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.
Bramalea California has nine active projects in Orange County: four in Foothill Ranch, three in Mission Viejo, one in Tustin and the Newport Coast project.
Perrin said he believes there will be significant opportunities for entrepreneurial builders in Southern California in the next few years--if they have access to capital. But the capital-gathering abilities of companies like Bramalea, whose Canadian parent has been saddled with “tremendous problems” left over from investment decisions made in the booming 1980s, will be limited, he said.
“So I decided that the best way for me to take advantage of my assets as an entrepreneurial developer is to go out on my own,” he said.
Perrin said he will set up his new company over the next few months but has not yet chosen an inaugural project.
To underscore his continuing relationship with Bramalea, Perrin said he will maintain a temporary office “across the hall” in the same Irvine office building at the regional headquarters of Trizec Corp., a Calgary-based holding company that is a major Bramalea Ltd. shareholder.
Under the Bramalea Ltd. restructuring plan, Trizec’s current 35% ownership will be cut to 22% to 26%, while Bramalea’s major lenders will acquire at least 51% of the company’s shares. Bramalea Ltd. is traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
