CdM’s Cadigan Gives $27M to Boston College

Patrick F. Cadigan, a successful tech CEO and real estate investor based in Newport Beach, has donated  $27 million to construct a new alumni center at Boston College.

Cadigan’s gift will also fund an arts and recreation center at Boston College High School.  Cadigan is a graduate of both institutions.

The new facilities will bear his name: the Cadigan Alumni Center at Boston College and Cadigan Hall, which will house a “new center for arts and recreation that will provide additional studio space for BC High’s fine and performing arts program and a new gymnasium” according to an announcement from the University this week.

Cadigan, who lives in Corona Del Mar, is retired and is the former CEO and president of Electronic Engineering Company of California (EECO). After retiring from EECO he also served on the boards of 15 mainly high-tech and electronics firms, and as chairman and CEO of several public companies, including Gateway Communications Inc. and Linear Instruments Corp.

According to a statement from Boston College, Cadigan “is now the largest private real estate holder in Orange County” and spent four decades as an active real estate investor here in Orange County. His holdings include numerous apartment complexes.

Boston College, in announcing the gift, said Cadigan cites the “discipline and moral training of his Jesuit teachers were factors that helped him, as the son of Irish immigrants who worked part-time at his father’s bar in Cambridge to help pay for his education, to become one of Southern California’s most successful high tech leaders and real estate investors.”

After graduating from Boston College in 1957, Cadigan worked in the Boston area before being hired by EECO to come to the West Coast in 1962 to run the company’s sales and marketing efforts. In a career spanning more than two decades at EECO, most of it as the company’s CEO and president, Cadigan helped the company expand in the U.S. and worldwide.

“My parents were not able to obtain a formal education, so I felt a very personal responsibility to give back to those wonderful schools that educated and shaped me,” said Cadigan. “Boston College is so well regarded here in California and throughout the country … With the Sesquicentennial Celebration forthcoming, it seemed like an ideal time for me to make these commitments to my alma mater. I hope they will be helpful additions that will provide lasting benefits for these outstanding institutions, their students and alumni.”

Cadigan  holds an MBA from Boston College, and a degree from Harvard’s Advanced Management Program and a Master’s and Ph.D. from Claremont Graduate University.

His wife, Tandra, is an OB/Gyn based in Newport Heights.

He also has three children: Ann; David, a former Newport Harbor High football standout and NFL player; and Maria, who graduated from Boston College in 1991.