Nancy Graham, president of the Centre City Development Corp., resigned Thursday, saying she needed to care for her ailing mother in Tennessee and could not effectively run San Diego's downtown redevelopment arm from afar.
Union-Tribune photo
Nancy Graham had been on medical leave to attend to her mother in Nashville.
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She is the second head of a nonprofit city agency to step down in two days.
The board of the Southeastern Economic Development Corp. fired its president, Carolyn Smith, Wednesday night after discrepancies were uncovered in the agency's budget and compensation.
Graham, who was hired in October 2005 and had an annual salary of $248,000, had been on medical leave to attend to her mother. She sent her letter of resignation to CCDC board chairman Fred Maas at 12:19 p.m.
She said her mother, who suffers from Parkinson's disease and related dementia, had worsened in recent weeks. Graham said she had been planning to move her mother to San Diego.
“Based on these circumstances, I do not feel it is fair to you, the board, the staff, the city and others for me to continue to try and operate CCDC from Nashville. I think my responsibility to my mother is the greatest at the present time,” she wrote.
The resignation is effective immediately.
In a statement, Maas said, “We recognize that family comes first and we fully support her decision.”
Graham had been conspicuously absent from CCDC over the past week while proposals to redevelop the Civic Center were unveiled with much fanfare.
Mayor Jerry Sanders said earlier Thursday that he plans to have performance audits done on three other city-affiliated nonprofits, including CCDC, after finding problems at SEDC.
“Nancy has been a tremendous asset to our city and a true champion for downtown's redevelopment since her arrival from Florida in 2005,” Sanders said in a statement. “Her ideas and innovative approach to focusing on the public realm have set in motion many important projects that will positively enhance downtown for years to come.”
Graham was mayor of West Palm Beach, Fla., from 1991 to 1999, led the redevelopment of that city's struggling downtown, and was once named one of the country's top 25 mayors by Newsweek magazine.
She later became a principal in a development firm before being recruited to the San Diego agency, which is separate from the city but reports to the city's Redevelopment Agency.
