Costa Mesa real estate company shuffles jobs

Thomas Schriber -- a co-founder of the Costa Mesa real estate company

that played a major role in the redesign of Fashion Island -- plans

to reduce his activities with the firm at the start of the new year.

Schriber, currently chief executive and chairman of Costa

Mesa-based Donahue Schriber, announced Monday that he intends to hand

the chief executive’s post to Patrick Donahue the firm’s president

and chief operating officer. He is also the brother of company

co-founder Daniel Donahue, who died in 2002.

Schriber plans to stay with the company as chairman.

“Tom is not retiring; he is simply relinquishing the role of the

day-to-day activities over to me,” Patrick Donahue said.

In a phone interview, Patrick Donahue said the move was part of a

succession plan that was conceived in November 2002.

As Patrick Donahue moves up, chief financial officer Lawrence

Casey is slated to become chief operating officer. Vice president of

finance Lisa Hirose is set to replace Casey.

The promotions are a way to reward Casey and Hirose for their

work, Schriber said. He touted the executives as the people to “lead

it [Donahue Schriber] into the 22nd century.”

Donahue Schriber, which has been a private real estate investment

trust since 1997, has existed in various forms for 36 years. The

company’s specialty is retail properties. According to the company’s

website, Donahue Schriber’s portfolio includes 70 shopping centers in

the western United States.

In the late 1980s, the firm supervised the implementation of

Irvine Co. chairman Donald Bren’s plan to recast Newport Beach’s

Fashion Island as a more stylish shopping center. The work included

the installation of fountains, enhanced lighting and signs and adding

more restaurants to the center.

“The center was quite a bit different. It was a 1960s-era regional

mall,” said Keith Eyrich, president of Irvine Co. Retail Properties.

In 2002, Schriber and Daniel Donahue won Lifetime Achievement

Awards from the UC Irvine’s business school for their work on Fashion

Island and other retail sites.

Before Donahue Schriber stepped in, Fashion Island “was just a

mall. It was a regular old mall,” said G. Christopher Davis, real

estate program manager at UC Irvine’s Paul Merage School of Business.

Once his workload with Donahue Schriber is reduced, Schriber said

his plans include coaching his grandchildren in soccer and tee-ball

and spending more time with Kidworks, a Santa Ana-based charity that

provides tutoring and preschool classes for children in that city.

Schriber is a member of Kidworks’ board of directors.

* ANDREW EDWARDS covers business and the environment. He can be

reached at (714) 966-4624 or by e-mail at

[email protected].