Wilder sets his own agenda
Mayor's agresssive stance angers allies, but he still commands respect

by Richard Foster
for Virginia Business
April 2006

In his first year as Richmond’s mayor, former Gov. L. Douglas Wilder hired a new police chief who went to work on changing the city’s longtime, troublesome rap as one of the country’s most murderous cities. Arrests were made in 70 percent of the city’s murders, compared to 49 percent the year before.

True to his campaign promises, Wilder also took a broom to City Hall. He replaced top officials and formed advisory committees with representatives from local businesses to suggest ways of improving everything from regional cooperation to mass transit.

But what does the typical Richmonder remember from the headlines about Wilder’s first year? The very public battle Wilder waged over a proposed $112 million performing arts center, which had been backed by many business leaders as a centerpiece in the revival of downtown Richmond.

Making a long story short: The Virginia Performing Arts Foundation, chaired by supermarket and banking magnate James E. Ukrop, started raising money to build the center on Broad Street downtown before Wilder took office. City Council had approved giving tens of millions of dollars collected from meals taxes to the foundation if it met fund-raising goals, but it didn’t.

Wilder stepped in, called the whole thing a mess and said in the newspapers that Ukrop, who had contributed $5,500 to Wilder’s mayoral campaign, didn’t “own” him. The fight ended with the foundation’s executive director resigning and the Wilder administration essentially sending the arts center plans into limbo.

"Who’s surprised?” asks University of Virginia political pundit Larry Sabato, who closely followed Wilder’s historic 1990-94 term as the nation’s first elected black governor. “Wilder’s in his 70s, and that old dog isn’t going to learn a whole lot of new tricks.”

After all, this is the same Doug Wilder whose nasty, long-running feud with a fellow Democrat, former Sen. Charles S. Robb, culminated with Wilder briefly running as an independent against Robb in 1996.

TIMELINE: WILDER'S FIRST 15 MONTHS

The City Crusader April 2005 2005 Jan. 2: Wilder inaugurated. March 17: Wilder questions Virginia Performing Arts Foundation’s plans for a $112 million downtown music and theater complex. June 20: Shockoe Bottom ballpark developers present plans to Wilder’s advisory committee for the district. July 19: Wilder blasts Richmond schools as too dangerous. He begins a school oversight committee. Aug. 12: City orders work stopped on the performing arts center site (a former Thalhimers department store) saying contractors have not asked for required inspections. Aug. 23: Wilder wants the project scaled back to renovating the existing Carpenter Center theater. Oct. 13: Brad Armstrong, executive director of the arts foundation, announces his resignation, effective at year end. Nov. 2: Wilder endorses Timothy M. Kaine for governor. Nov. 5: Paul Goldman, a top Wilder aide, receives a $15,000 fee from the Kaine campaign. He is suspended in late December for political consulting without permission and resigns in February. Nov. 17: Wilder and the arts center foundation agree to renovate the Carpenter Center while allowing a committee appointed by the mayor to decide what to do with the Thalhimers site. Dec. 29: Developers of the proposed Shockoe Bottom stadium confirm that the project is dead. 2006 Jan. 10: Wilder announces $250 million five-year plan for the city. Feb. 24: Wilder orders a city investigation in the death of two bears at Maymont Park. The bears were killed and tested for rabies after one of them bit the hand of a 4-year-old child.

Even though Sabato calls the arts center tiff “the biggest scar on Wilder’s record so far” as mayor, the political expert adds that “it’s relatively minor,” a can-opener slice to the finger, not an appendectomy scar. Sabato believes the incident will not alienate Richmond’s business community.

“That doesn’t mean they have to love him or even like him, but they’re going to work with him. … He’s an enormous plus for Richmond and the whole region. There is literally no one else in the state who has that much clout, with both the governor and the Republication legislature.”

Since Wilder was elected in a landslide in 2004 as Richmond’s first strong mayor in more than 50 years, all eyes have been on him, as observers wonder how his policies will affect the Richmond region. And while the public tends to concentrate on Wilder’s grandstanding moments, like his assertion of power against the arts center, the majority of his work happens quietly behind the scenes as he focuses on fixing Richmond’s long-term problems like crime and education.

His efforts appear to be paying dividends. Confidence in the city is growing around the region because of Wilder’s leadership, says Jim Dunn, president of the Greater Richmond Chamber of Commerce. “Leaders, they all have their own individual styles and certainly Doug Wilder has his style, and it’s not new,” says Dunn. “Those who have followed him in his career know he can be very aggressive in taking on people or assumptions. I think what he’s trying to say is: ‘The buck is now stopping at my desk, and I need to make sure what’s going on here and how the taxpayer dollars are being utilized.’”

Even a former member of the arts foundation board, Beverly W. “Booty” Armstrong, has tactful praise for Wilder’s leadership. Armstrong is vice chairman of CCA Industries in Richmond, which owns The Jefferson Hotel. After the arts foundation scaled back its plans, he resigned in November as treasurer and canceled a pledge estimated to range from $250,000 to $1 million. Armstrong gives Wilder an “A minus,” with points off for his rancorous relationship last year with City Council. Nonetheless, Wilder “has put a lot of things into motion, most of which are good,” says Armstrong. “I think it will take time to see what comes out on the other end…There are so many problems in the city that I think that even he was surprised at how serious they are. You can’t expect everybody to agree with you and do everything right.”

Wilder, 75, began his second year in office with a call for a $250 million-plus debt-financed plan to build schools and make citywide infrastructure improvements, such as upgrading technology in city libraries. But some observers worry that he may have expended too much political capital in battling the arts center. Privately, friends of Ukrop (who would not comment for this story) say that he feels betrayed by Wilder, whom the businessman backed for mayor.

Wilder denies feuding with Ukrop, saying he didn’t mean to single out the businessman when he said that no one will own him or tell him what to do as mayor. “It was anyone!” says the mayor.

Wilder appears unconcerned that his brusque management style might rub the business community the wrong way. In a City Hall interview, he rhetorically asks the people gathered in his office what the region’s business leaders had done to revitalize the city before his mayoral election. The room is quiet. Wilder makes his point without saying a word.

Wilder, in fact, may not be as concerned about economic development as many business leaders would like. He is passionate about projects like the mixed-use Rocketts Landing development along the James River, the Cordish Co.’s riverfront entertainment project downtown and Philip Morris’ $300 million research and development center under construction in the city’s Virginia BioTechnology Research Park. But those projects were all under discussion before Wilder took office.

Likewise, the state government, not the city, gets credit for recruiting MeadWestvaco Corp., a Fortune 500 packaging company that will move its headquarters to the Richmond region later this year. But, says William Harrell, the city’s chief administrative officer, the Wilder administration is aggressively lobbying the company to put its permanent headquarters inside the city.

Some say, however, that Wilder hasn’t been particularly development-friendly, pointing out the mayor’s cool reception to plans for a new Richmond Braves ballpark in the city’s Shockoe Bottom area. Dirk Graham, a former Wilder supporter who owns the popular Bottoms Up Pizza restaurant in the Bottom, says the ballpark would have been a shot in the arm for businesses still recovering from an August 2004 flood caused by Tropical Storm Gaston.

Wilder dismisses such criticism, saying that the ballpark promoters didn’t attract the investors that they needed. The Braves don’t want to stay at The Diamond, the 20-year-old ballpark in North Richmond, but the mayor thinks the city has found an alternative at the site of the former Fulton Hill Gas Works near Church Hill. Nonetheless, Wilder and the Braves have squabbled over the site, with the team saying that the mayor has failed to answer its concerns about costs and road access.

Yet if Wilder isn’t necessarily focused on splashy development projects, where is his attention? He says it is aimed at basic problems that have dogged Richmond for decades. “Education and crime: You fix those things, economic development follows,” he says.

His solutions include a pilot mixed-use, mixed-income neighborhood that would be built around one of the new schools proposed in his plan. Laura

Lafayette, a former official from Wilder’s term as governor, co-chairs a commission looking at the idea, which would involve for-profit developers, the city and the Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority. She anticipates the development being completed in the next four years, although no location has been proposed.

Wilder’s regional cooperation commission also is looking at other revitalization efforts such as revamping decaying, corridors that overlap the city and surrounding counties, such as Jefferson Davis Highway and Laburnum Avenue.

His proposals have been well received by regional counterparts. Henrico County Manager Virgil Hazelett says Wilder “is making changes in the city which will be to the betterment of the city and I think to the region.”
Wilder hopes to have his agenda complete, or at least well on its way, before he leaves office. “It’s my desire to be able to have everything where I’d like to see it and I could go back to the river,” to his estate in Charles City County.

But when will that be? If Wilder runs and serves another four-year term as mayor, he would be well into his 80s. He says he hasn’t decided yet, then adds with a hearty laugh, “…For those who bet on waiting me out, it’s not a good bet.”