Lobbyist: I'll head Convention Center 'until you kick me out'

Is Harrisburg corporate lobbyist and Delaware County Republican scion John McNichol on the fast track to exceed his current unpaid interim status and settle in for the long term as President and CEO at the state-backed, not-as-busy-as-it-should-be Pennsylvania Convention Center?

McNichol, whose day job has been as a lobbyist for Greenlee Partners (they prod Pa. legislators for telecom, energy, casino and union clients, among others), told fellow directors at yesterday's monthly meeting that he's staked out a Web address on the Center's server and has been meeting one-on-one with the Center's operating managers, including bosses at SMG, the big West Conshohocken facilities manager hired late last year to replace ousted city-backed CEO Ahmeenah Young.

"You don't know what you don't know" until you've had a lot of sit-downs, McNichol told fellow directors. "I'm here every day and night, until such time as you kick me out of the building," he added, smiling.

Seriously: is the board making any effort at finding professional facilities managers or other candidates in addition to McNichol? "It's a process I'm working on over the next 30 days," board chairman Greg Fox told me. That how long it'll take to find a search firm? No, just to decide on whether to hire one: "I'm not sure yet" whether there will be a search firm, or what process, Fox added. "This will be resolved by Spring."

"There needs to be a search," Ryan Boyer, the Center board member representing the Laborers union, countered later. He noted Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter and some of Boyer's fellow directors have pulled for a national search, to include candidates who are women, African Americans (still a plurality of Philadelphia residents and Democratic voters), and other minority groups. He said the long-term hire is far from a done deal.

In Philadelphia, of course, there's precedent for putting a politico in the CEO's job. As the last CEO of Tasty Baking Co. former Philadelphia city commece director Charlie Pizzi wasn't able to keep the stock price up or the company independent. But he scored enough state aid to build the new Tasty Baking plant at the Navy Yard that has survived the company's sale to Flowers Foods (which the previous, rundown bakery in North Philly likely wouldn't have), and its subsequent expansion into bread baking, etc.

The former Philadelphia Stock Exchange prospered for its last decade before its 2007 sale to the Nasdaq stock market under Sandy Frucher, a politically-connected New York dealmaker who was brought here to close the place but ended up becoming its biggest defender against Washington regulators and negotiating with New York investors and clients, who joined Frucher in getting rich from the exchange's eventual sale.

Ahmeenah Young's critics sometimes said the city needed a career facilties manager. McNichol isn't that. But now that day-to-day operations are run by SMG and the board has decided to split off a CEO job to represent the state's interest in the center, and given the center's dependence on continued state financing and tax arrangements, it might not be so surprising to see a politically connected person in the job McNichol occupies at the moment. Though it would be refreshing to hear the people in charge admit it.