Looking to the Land for Signs of Progress

For David Fields, social progress has a lot to do with land.

He traces his own career path--from a Los Angeles high school to Yale University and Harvard Law School, to a position as the top lawyer for a division of the Irvine Co.--back to a plot of land.

It was a land-use issue of sorts that prompted Fields’ parents to leave the Deep South for Los Angeles in 1959 when he was just a year old. The land in question was a community park in the city of Baton Rouge where he was born, a park for the white community.

“For my parents, the real trigger was when my older sister asked them why she couldn’t play in this particular park,” said Fields, 39, now vice president and general counsel of the Irvine Retail Properties Co., with annual sales of $1.2 billion. “That was when they said, ‘We’ve got to do something different here.’

“In leaving the South, they didn’t want us to have a life that focused so heavily on race. Based upon what they went through in the South at that time, they could have been very bitter people, but they chose not to be. They wanted to raise us in an environment where race was not going to be the focal point of our lives.”

For Fields’ parents and other families who left the South at that time, land continued to be an issue.

“I witnessed the difficulty of so many black families keeping their land in Louisiana, and my family was a part of that. During the Great Migration out of the South to places like California, many black families left land that they owned, and much of it was lost to tax sales. Black families have lost thousands of acres in the South,” said Fields, an Irvine resident.

“My parents really had to be careful and watchful of how the ownership of their land was managed. That involved a certain amount of legal maneuvering. So growing up, I had some exposure to what lawyers do and developed some fascination for it.”

During his junior year at Yale, his interest in a legal career was heightened by a semester-long internship at the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department.

“I worked on police brutality cases, voting rights cases, and I got to see the Supreme Court in action. By working very closely with lawyers, it solidified my desire to enter the legal profession.”

His roommate’s father was a prominent real estate investor.

“His family really took me under their wing, and I got to see some very interesting aspects of the real estate-investment business. I was just absolutely fascinated by what they were doing in terms of developing and renovating.

“It’s this tangible asset that you’re creating, that can build wealth, but at the same time, it can be an integral part of building a community. It was that connection between real estate and building a community that was fascinating to me.”

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Two years after graduation from Harvard, he set out to rebuild a little corner of Inglewood. It was a five-unit apartment building in a state of serious disrepair.

“I tried to make it come back to life in a way that I thought would be beneficial to that community. Obviously, I wanted it to perform well for me, but I really wanted it to be an example of how things could look and be maintained in this community.

“What was really interesting was arranging the financing, dealing with tenant issues, having to rid the property of some tenants and attract new tenants, dealing with the management of the property. It was a useful experience. It taught me a lot about the thinking that goes into community development.”

After seven years of working in real estate law and investment, Fields joined the Irvine Co. in 1989, where one of his first assignments was to resolve a dispute about soil contamination from gas stations that threatened to delay the Newport Coast development.

“It was a trial by fire. But I like the challenge of being called upon to solve a crisis, and it was an opportunity early on to prove to people that I could get the job done.”

He negotiated with several oil companies and government agencies to win what became the Irvine Co.’s first major environmental remediation agreement, keeping the 2,600-home coastal development on track.

Earlier this year, Fields was a finalist for the job of top lawyer at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Fields said he was surprised that his desire for government service required him to lobby political leaders for support. One of his Yale classmates got the job.

The three-month experience left him a bit disillusioned, but his penchant for community-building is still intact. As a charter member of 100 Black Men of Orange County, Fields is currently raising funds for the organization’s Passport to the Future program, which provides high school students with mentors, apprenticeships and college scholarships.

“I want to see that the high quality of life that’s possible here is afforded to as many Orange County citizens as possible. There is a very distinct voice in Orange County that wants to reach out to people. I’ve seen it happen.”

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Profile: David Fields

Age: 39

Hometown: Baton Rouge, La.

Residence: Irvine

Family: Wife, Karla; 2-year-old son, Noah

Education: Bachelor’s degree in psychology, Yale University; juris doctorate degree, Harvard Law School

Background: Vice president and general counsel for Irvine Retail Properties Co. since 1991, associate general counsel, Irvine Industrial Co. and Irvine Retail Properties Co., 1989-91; legal advisor for acquisition, sale and financing of commercial and multiple-unit residential properties, Pircher, Nichols & Meeks (Los Angeles), 1984-89; practiced real estate, banking and property tax law, Baker & Hostetler (Los Angeles), 1982-84; interned with U.S. Justice Department Civil Rights Division while at Yale University

Outside the office: Considered this year for U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development general counsel; Chairman, Real Property Law Section Executive Committee, State Bar of California, 1996-97; charter member of 100 Black Men of Orange County; chairman, UCI Dean’s Council for School of the Arts, 1994-96; member, Los Angeles Board of Directors of Public Counsel (nation’s largest and oldest bar-sponsored pro bono law firm), 1992-95.

On community building: “It’s the connection between developing real estate and building a community that is fascinating to me. Real estate developers can either go in and create value in a community from the ground up or they help an existing community realize its full potential. Either way, it has a real impact on people’s lives.”

Source: David Fields; Researched by RUSS LOAR / For The Times