Bob White has spent his life turning big ideas into action

Bob White is a commanding and colorful figure. White always wears black, complete with a black cowboy hat and boots. He stands out in a crowd—a modern-day Paladin—and there’s no mistaking the power of that.
He grew up on the family farm near Washington Crossing, driving a tractor when other kids his age were learning to ride bikes. A Council Rock graduate, he joined the Marine Corps right out of high school and later ran his own construction company. He served as executive director of the Bucks County Redevelopment Authority for a quarter of a century.
A big guy with a million-dollar smile, and a personality to match, he always had big ideas and a “fix-it” attitude as he worked his way through million-dollar projects. What goes on under that Stetson has had a profound effect on Bucks County.
Those ideas, that vision, capped with hard work, attention to detail, common sense and a desire to fix what’s broken have cleaned up Bucks County and helped to dump millions into municipal coffers.
White strode into county government in 1993, referred by Republican powerhouse Pat Deon, to lead the Bucks County Redevelopment Authority’s housing rehabilitation program; in just two years he had become executive director.
He carefully built a team and was off and running in a race to erase the blemishes on the county he loves. Using the personal skills and know-how he had adapted to military life as well as his own business, he navigated his way through municipal grant programs and business loans to upgrade neighborhoods, resurrect brownfields and clean up toxic sites.
The RDA, under his guidance, was instrumental in creating new uses for hundreds of sites.
When he retired in 2018, he said, “I didn’t know I didn’t have to work so hard to keep this job, I could have just been a politician and raise money. I always say that’s the reason it was successful. That and we hired good people.”
Jeff Darwak is now executive director of the authority and its work continues.

In addition to White’s work ethic, his success was due to his ability to “sell” a project to the people whose approval he sought.
White worked well and constructively with politicians whatever their party. He is especially grateful for the help of the late U.S. Rep Mike Fitzpatrick, who he said was responsible for a lot of government funding for RDA projects in Bucks County.
Now 82, White lives in Middletown Township and has his own consulting business. It’s no surprise that he, a practical man, would want to share his knowledge and experience and he has written and published a book with Allen Slutsky. “It’s a college-level book of how to get things done,” White said.
Titled “Repurposing the Past: How a Former Farm Boy and Marine Helped Give Bucks County a 21st-Century Facelift,” it’s dedicated to his wife, Gladys Mendieta White. He has also created the Gladys Mendieta Scholarship for Latina students at the Lower Bucks campus of Bucks County Community College.
White tells his life story in the first pages of the book, detailing his days on the farm, adventures in the Marines and coming home to Bucks. It’s funny, sad and charming all at once—a good read.
But the book offers a greater value, too—the case studies of some of the RDA projects he oversaw. In the foreword he described them as “entertaining tales unto themselves: stories of small-town politics, visionary developers and ambitious, colorful personalities with a fair share of heroes and villains thrown in.”
In each case study he provides the history of the site, blight issues, photos, course of action, costs and grants and final status, plus the challenges met and unmet. He writes of what worked and what didn’t.
Interesting for the casual reader, White’s book offers invaluable, practical lessons for other authorities, officials, students or anyone interested in large-scale redevelopment.
Signed copies of the book may be ordered at White’s website, repurposingthepast.com. Books also may be purchased at local bookstores, Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

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