Playing Politics: Swinerton Project Executive Frequents City Hall

Peggy Delach is finishing her first term as mayor of Covina, a small suburb east of Los Angeles. She says the experience in city government has helped her career in construction. Council members consider her knowledge of development and construction issues a tremendous asset to Covina's goals of attracting the right types of projects.

By Paul Napolitano

When most people in the construction industry are heading home for the day, Peggy A. Delach makes tracks for city hall.

Peggy Delach, a project executive at Swinerton Builders and mayor of Covina, at the Los Angeles Free Clinic jobsite with Swinerton superintendent Jesse Mendoza (photo courtesy of Swinerton Builders).

The project executive with the Los Angeles office of Swinerton Builders also is the mayor of Covina, a city of 49,000 in the San Gabriel Valley.

Delach, a 12-year Swinerton employee who serves as the firm's project executive for its Bank of America national account, was encouraged to enter politics by her husband of eight years, Fran, a former Covina city manager.

"I got into politics because I was frustrated by the council's lack of forward thinking," the mayor said. "The [council] typically just took whoever walked in the door with a project on a small piece of dirt -- generally unrelated to anything around it -- and said, 'OK,' which has created a hodge-podge of repetitive services. There are way too many antique stores and hair salons."

Delach, 48, said Covina should be trying to acquire several lots surrounding an available lot and build a major project with symbiotic services like the Paseo Colorado retail-entertainment center in Pasadena, about 15 mi. to the west.

"Covinans shouldn't have to travel to other towns to get what they want; they should spend their money where they live," said Delach, who became the mayor in March 2005 after serving on the City Council for two years.

Covina residents elect council members for a four-year term. During the term, a council member may be selected by fellow council members as mayor or mayor pro-tem to serve a one-year term.

Downtown Covina, 25 mi. east of downtown Los Angeles, grew long in the tooth when a regional mall was built decades ago in West Covina (population 140,000) -- and it's been an uphill battle ever since to recruit developers to the three-block-long strip of Citrus Avenue that constitutes the city center.

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Measurable Impact

Fellow council members said Delach has made a measurable impact since she was elected to the Covina council in 2003 -- and with her 23 years of construction experience.

"It's safe to say that Peggy has led the charge in bringing developers together to look at that project," said council member John King, referring to a redevelopment downtown that would include a mix of retail, office and for-sale condos.

John King

"She has asked [the developer] to meet milestones and we are moving forward at a significantly quicker pace than I think we would have without her leadership. I think she has been a real value from the city side in terms of understanding the nuances of construction and development. She knows what it costs to put a building up or to renovate one."

Delach, a native of Rochester, N.Y., spends several hours a week on a variety of mayoral tasks that include correspondence with council members and residents, presiding at twice-monthly council meetings that last about three to four hours and speaking at occasional civic events on weekends and holidays.

Her frenetic schedule has not had a detrimental impact on her relationship with Bank of America.

"She goes out of her way to service her client and makes sure she is available almost 24/7," said Beverly Miranda of Jones Lang LaSalle, the real estate management firm contracted by B of A. "If I call her on her cell phone at 8 o'clock at night, she'll answer the call and respond to my request. No one provided that level of service before her. If she doesn't know how to get it done, she'll find out how to get it done."

Delach's boss at Swinerton, operations manager Kim Grant, said Delach provides outstanding leadership of her Swinerton and account teams.

"Some managers run into roadblocks and stop," said Grant, a 21-year employee of Swinerton. "Peggy anticipates them and comes up with methods to get around obstacles, so not to disappoint her clients. "

Kevin Stapleton

Council member Kevin Stapleton, a Covina-based attorney, is also impressed with Delach's knack for getting things done. "She moves the ball down the field," he said.

Delach had three years of study at Cal Poly Pomona under her belt -- she is one year shy of receiving a degree in construction technology -- when she started in the construction field in 1980 as a project secretary on a job at Universal Amphitheater for Morrison-Knudsen Co. , an Idaho-based general contractor.

Her first mentor was a Morrison- Knudsen project engineer who had a law degree.

"John Thompson was fabulous," Delach said. "He taught me how to read drawings. And as I got better and as revisions came into the project, he let me decide who they would go out to and he would oversee it. By the end of that job, I was reading drawings, punching out change orders and doing the monthly applications. "
Thompson, who had trouble hearing in one ear, demonstrated the importance of listening to people, she said.

"He said, 'you know Peggy, I do what most people don't do any more: I listen because half the time I have to read people's lips,'" Delach added. "He was too proud to wear a hearing aid. And that's what I tell my people: 'Listen to what people are saying and you'll be amazed at what you can learn.'"

Delach said she has evolved from being a good listener to being an open-minded leader.

"Probably my greatest attribute that Swinerton taps is my ability to get along with just about everybody, listen well and mentor new people," she added. "I don't teach people 'my way,' rather I show them how I do it -- then tell them if they can fine tune it to fit their thought process, go for it. Construction is not an exact science; there are many ways of reaching the goal."

Delach has found believers in a number of employees on her team.

"She's very intelligent and diligent, which makes her approachable," said Steve Lamar, a 29-year-old assistant superintendent. "You can always ask her questions and she's there to answer them. She's quick to tell you that she doesn't know everything. And she's even admitted that she's learned from me."

Her project superintendent, Sherry Madison, said, "She has a plateful of items to deal with but she's so organized that she can peel them back like a banana."

Help From Her Husband

When Delach was getting her feet wet in politics a few years ago as a council member, she was eager to take advice from her husband, who had worked for the city of Covina for 22 years.

Fran Delach

"I helped her with the political angles," said Fran Delach, who was hired in June as city manager of Azusa, which borders Covina. "I was able to give her insight so she wouldn't get caught off guard by certain issues. She would occasionally ask me budget-type questions because there are certain regulations and laws in local government that you can't do in the private sector."

Peggy Delach, who earns $400 a month as mayor during her 12-month term, said her greatest accomplishment at city hall has been restoring consensus.

"It was extremely divisive, confrontational and self-destructive before I got there," she said. "I was the 'newby' that got on the council. I really pushed in every closed session that the only way we could be successful was to be team builders. It took a while, but in a couple of years' time, we were all working together and having 5-0 and 4-1 votes. I think once in a blue moon a vote is 3-2.
"We're more professional now. We now have three council members with corporate experience outside of Covina and a global sense of what's going on in L.A."

Chris Lancaster, a former council member who resigned in June to campaign for the State Assembly, said Delach has a "wonderful" personality.

"The mayor speaks on behalf of the majority of the opinion of the council and she has done a wonderful job articulating the issues that are important to the council," said Lancaster, new business development director at the West Covina-based San Gabriel Valley Tribune newspaper.

Delach said her toughest decision as mayor has been an eminent domain case.

On prime-time TV: Peggy Delach led a crew of 18 Swinerton people and more than 200 subcontractors who volunteered their time to complete a 5,000-sq.-ft. tenant-improvement project (a 12-week job in an aggressive schedule) for the Los Angeles Free Clinic in just 56 hours. Delach, center, is being interviewed by Ty Pennington, host of ABC-TV's "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" at the Hollywood jobsite. With her in front row, from left, Sherry Madison, Swinerton superintendent; Michelle Lee, Swinerton project engineer and designer; Jesse Mendoza, project superintendent (partially obscured by Delach); and Jay Gibson, Swinerton project manager. Photo courtesy of Swinerton Builders.

"A auto dealership [in Covina] needed to expand for storage of cars, and there is an adjacent piece of property (a small strip center of nine small business), and it's in our redevelopment area, so we can eminent domain it," Delach said. "The owner [of the dealership] has called the owner of the strip center several times wanting to buy it for their expansion. The dealership brings us a lot in sales tax revenue, but it was hard to make that decision because the owner was an elderly woman and one of the businesses was owned by a past council member whom I replaced.

"That had to be the hardest thing to do. We all decided to eminent domain it. We're still pursuing it and the owner is considering legal action. Several of the tenants have moved and we did everything we could to help them. But that's really hard when they come up to the podium [at City Council meetings] and tells us that this is their only source of income."

Unlike the majority of cities in the San Gabriel Valley, Covina, which was incorporated in 1901, only has a sliver of freeway frontage, which yields municipality little sales tax revenue from large businesses like chain restaurants, hotels, "big-box" stores and car dealerships.

"The state took away vehicle license fees ($900,000) and redevelopment fees ($700,000) in '04," Delach said. "All cities in the state were affected at different levels."

Even so, Delach said Covina is still a full-service city.

"We still have our own police department; we gave up our own fire department 10 years ago, and we have our own library," the mayor said. "And in surrounding cities like Glendora and San Dimas, police and libraries are served by L.A. County."

Delach said Covina saves about $500,000 a year being serviced by the Los Angeles County Fire Department.

Fran Delach, who joked that his wife's passion for civic life has meant seeing less of her, said Peggy has excelled way beyond his expectations. "I'm totally impressed by her dedication and quick learning of the nuances of local government," he said.

Despite the rigorous pace at Swinerton and being shortchanged on personal time, Delach said she wants to return as mayor in 2007, a year after her one-year term ends this month.

"I would like to continue projects we have in motion to completion," she said. "We're on a roll now; I don't want to see the city lose that momentum."