Longtime Delco commerce director says farewell to job
With a public service career spanning five decades, J. Patrick Killian, son of a mining family and a man who not only worked for U.S. Sen. John Heinz, R-Pa., but also called him a friend, retired from his post as director of the Delaware County Commerce Center at the end of 2020.
“My original intent was to retire last December,” the 72-yearold Havertown resident said.
However, he said when the county administration changed from Republican to Democratic, he decided, with council’s blessing to stay for what he thought would only be through the transition.
Then, COVID-19 reared and Killian’s retirement was once again placed on pause as the director couldn’t walk away with the business community under such duress.
But, by the end of last year, he’d finally decided. “I’ve reached a point where its time,” Killian said.
Killian was born in Scranton to a family of miners. He was the first in his family to work in another profession. He graduated from the University of Scranton with an undergraduate degree in political science in 1970.
After serving in the U.S. Naval Reserve, he began his career in public administration for Lackawanna County before becoming press secretary for the 1976 campaign for Heinz, a move that would define his career and forever impact his personal life.
Fourteen years before he came to Delaware County, Killian served as the senator’s press secretary and executive assistant and even met his wife, Catherine, on the job as she, too, worked for the senator. They now have been married for 37 years and have three daughters.
“The politics were so different then,” Killian said of the Heinz era. “It breaks my heart. It’s not the way it’s supposed to be.”
However, through tragedy, sometimes, there can be hope as evident in 2020 with the pandemic and the associated crisis.
“A new majority - a Democratic administration and a Republican appointee ... works together seamlessly for the common good, which means that it can be done, so why don’t we just do it?” Killian said.
He spoke of the tragedy that eventually led him to Delaware County. On April 4, 1991, Killian and Heinz had arranged to have dinner that evening. On the senator’s schedule was a town hall in Media.
As he left home that morning, Killian told his wife, “I’ll be late. I’ll be with John tonight.”
“She thought I’d be with him all day,” he added.
However, Killian had a lunch scheduled in Philadelphia.
“I get in the car at the garage and turn on KYW and hear that it happened,” he said of the plane and helicopter collision over Merion Elementary School. “I went straight to the Heinz office. In the meantime, Catherine couldn’t get me. She knew that very often when we were in the suburbs, we would use a helicopter. She thought I was on a helicopter.”
Eventually, she found out her husband was still alive.
After staying with the Heinz staff all day, Killian said he came home and cried.
“We were incredibly close,” he said, adding that a lot of what he learned was from the senator. “He was the straightest shooter in the world.”
Here, in Delaware County, there were many problems with the Commerce Center’s predecessor, the Partnership for Economic Development. With Killian’s good reputation and knowledge of government, he was pegged as the person to turn it around.
“I’ll come, we’ll get it right,”
Killian said the thinking was. “I thought I was going to stay for three years and they all agreed. Unfortunately, God intervened and John died ... Lo and behold, I realized I seemed to be pretty good with this.”
Twenty-nine plus years later, he says, “This time, I’m really leaving.”
His first focus was to straighten up the office from collecting loans to creating an administrative structure. “The pressure was to come in and clean that up,” Killian said. “In combination with the feds, that took about two years.”
One of his first big projects was Baldwin Towers.
“It had been empty for 20 years,” Killian said. On his weekly trips to Washington on the Metroliner, he said to himself, “Somebody out to do something about it.’”
He didn’t realize that somebody would be him.
His office negotiated for it to develop but a month before closure, environmental studies found they were filled with asbestos. Killian found a way to keep the purchaser online while finding a way to clean it up without bankrupting the county as a seller.
“We got it done,” he said. “The building’s been filled for 20 years.”
Next was having Delaware County become SAP’s North American headquarters.
“SAP started out as a 32 state search,” Killian said. “Tom Ridge was governor. I had had a personal relationship with Tom from my Heinz years.”
He credited a teamwork approach from the Newtown supervisors to state leadership in Matt Ryan and Joe Loeper and Tom Killion at the county level then.
Killian said they met with all of the principals nationally and internationally and it took a year from start to finish.
“They’re still a great corporate neighbor,” he said.
Another triumph was the Harrah’s site.
“Harrah’s was another one of those where somebody came to us initially (saying,) ‘We cant do anything with this? You want it?’” Killian said.
He said they were aware of the good location - 20-plus acres of riverfront property, 10 minutes from an international airport and they had heard of a group of local investors including George Miller, Kevin Flynn and Joseph Lashinger, who were interested in putting a racetrack there.
“That’s all we needed to hear,” Killian said. “We were prepared to go.”
However, he said they knew that the investors were going to have to bring in an outside operator.
“Somebody big was going to have to come in and somebody big was Harrah’s,” Killian said.
Similar to the Baldwin story, everything was all ready when the president of Harrah’s International was touring the site and noticed the proximity of the trash transfer station.
“His reaction was, ‘I’m not putting my casino there,’” Killian said. So, his office and others had to dig farther to make it happen. “At the end of the day, all these little things pop up.”
When it’s operating, he noted that the casino has more than 1,200 people working there and the millions in gaming revenue that’s been generated for the state, some of which pays the bond debt to the stadium and underwrites the expenses of the Delaware County Economic Development Board.
The soccer stadium was quite a success.
PECO, who owned the property, had been reluctant to show the property to anyone for a long time.
So Killian rented a boat so that he and others could view what they could from the Delaware River, especially after hearing that Major League Soccer was searching for a soccer stadium.
Some said to him, “Soccer would never be interested in this.”
He persisted, along with the governor’s office, the Delaware Port Authority, Delaware County and private investors.
And, Killian still pushes forward, saying the plan for residential, retail and office is still possible even after the real estate market fell.
“There is a plan out there that is imminently doable,” Killian said. “It’s going to be slower but it’s still possible.”
In his line of work, Killian has found consistency and resiliency to be key.
“Anything that came close, we never let get away,” he said. “By hook or by crook, we would all find a way to get it done ... We’ll try anything - anything that is legal and reasonable. If everyone communicates candidly with everybody and there’s no B.S. you can put together a deal. If everybody pulls together at the same time, you can get things done.”
Now, Killian’s faced with mixed emotions as his tenure has come to a close.
While he’s enjoyed the pressure, he wonders what his life will be like without it.
“My wife and I love to travel,” he said, adding that he’s hopeful some day post-pandemic they will be able to do so again.
“It’s been 50 years, that’s why I’ve got mixed emotions,” he said. “I’ve got friends - people I’ve met at this job.”
He’s considering joining a board, or maybe writing about his senatorial adventures.
“It’s up in the air,” he said. “I may learn how to post something different than ‘Happy Birthday’ on Facebook. I do think I’m going to write a little. It’s going to be an adjustment. (Maybe) come March and the skies will open up and I’ll actually be able to see people.”