Central City Profile: Bill Scheel

The same people who are making decisions today are some of the same people who fought against “The Man” in decades past. How do they feel about being the ones in power now? Are they happy with where we’ve come to?

I got to thinking about this when I went to the Cityscape topping off event downtown last month, which followed the news that Cityscape was going to have all locally owned establishments as tenants. This was great news for Arizona. Purchasing locally provides as much as 75% more tax revenue for our state.

It was a testament to the many people who communicated to the Cityscape planners to remind them that to support local businesses. I wonder if if Cityscape developers, Red Development, pushed for local tenants because their planned franchisees bailed on the project, or because they really wanted local ownership.

So, as I watched the proceedings and tried not to sweat too much, I got to thinking about all those folks who have been working at Phoenix redevelopment since the 1980s or before.

These folks got started in a time when politics in Phoenix was dominated by the mysterious “Phoenix 40,” only a few years after Don Boles was assassinated outside the Clarendon Hotel for exposing mob connections around town. (Read more about that group here.)

What was it like to “come up” in that time? What did they fight against? What are the parallels and lessons for today? Is the downtown they see today what they were hoping for almost 30 years ago?

I got to thinking that the Mayor’s Chief of Staff, Bill Scheel, in particular, is an interesting study. I’ve known Bill since about 2001, but I never got his full story, other than that he ran for city council back in the 1990s.

Here is a guy who may very well be the most important person in Phoenix government, next to Phil Gordon.

I don’t want to imply that Bill is some kind of a shadowy power player. He is certainly politically astute, but he is far too unassuming and humble to be described as Phil’s muscle guy.

I spoke to Scheel over coffee to get his story.

Bill Scheel moved to the F.Q. Story neighborhood of Phoenix from Iowa in 1983 to work on the Bruce Babbit gubernatorial campaign. After Babbit lost in the primary, Bill stayed here to work at the state level in the Planning and Economic Development.

He actually helped create the F.Q. Story historic neighborhood overlay. F.Q. Story at that time was far from the high-cost feeder neighborhood it is now. It was full of half-way houses and blighted properties.

He describes what it was like back then. The city was controlled by “The Phoenix 40.” They had so much power, they could dictate that no mayor stay in office more than two years. This was to keep the mayors from amassing too much power.

Margaret T. Hance was the first mayor to buck the system and win a second term. And then a third. That was in the early 80s.

Back then every city council member was elected at large, and they all lived in a small area of Central Phoenix.

Terry Goddard was elected in 1984 as the boy-wonder mayor with a hostile city council, yet he put in to place the Village Planning Committee system that we have now.  He also initiated historic preservation efforts and passed a 1987 bond program that got us the Science Center, the Orpheum renovation, the Herberger Theater and the Burton Barr Library.

Bill helped put Terry in office back then and he helped now-Congressman Ed Pastor pick up the congressional seat vacated by Arizona legend Mo Udall.

He met Phil Gordon around this time, as Gordon was the Chair of the Downtown Redevelopment Committee. Scheel, coming from a neighborhood activist perspective, admits that he saw Phil at that time as an inside player. Yet he was impressed with Phil’s ability to negotiate a deal between Goddard and the Phoenix 40 to preserve the Roosevelt Historic Neighborhood.

What cemented Gordon and Scheel’s relationship more than anything happened when Scheel ran unsuccessfully for city council in 1993. According to Scheel, Gordon just showed up and became part of the campaign committee. He had no agenda. He just worked.

Gordon’s turn came in 1997 when Councilman Craig Tribken announced suddenly that he would not run again. Scheel did not follow Gordon to City Hall as a staffer. He continued working in education outside of government until he began to work for Gordon in 2001. Gordon became mayor in 2003.

It is not an unheard of ascent to power by any means: new resident, community organizer, inner circle. Scheel is a man who moved from being a local neighborhood activist and political candidate to working behind the scenes.

However, it begs certain parallels. Back then the fight was around the secretive Phoenix 40. That organization is long gone. Now any mayor must negotiate with individual actors to get anything done. While less corrupt, it is certainly much more disjointed.

The city now is nothing like it was. It has embraced mixed-use, from what we can see. There is no tight cabal of power brokers at the top, yet it is still often difficult to convince voters to invest in city infrastructure.

Companies that are headquartered in other states dominate the Chambers of Commerce for the city and the state. Sure, they are no longer the Phoenix 40, but where is the local sense of pride and contribution that will be needed to make our transition to a dense urban core a reality?

When Bill Scheel looks up at Cityscape, is this what he envisioned? Are we where he wanted to be in terms of historic preservation and community influence?

When asked if Scheel got what he wanted after all these years, he is reflective. “Ideas of what works and doesn’t work have changes. 20 years ago, it wasn’t so obvious that organic businesses were the heart of downtown. We were just worried about the city tearing down buildings. But I don’t recall if we saw the connection between small businesses being lost and downtown.”

He continues, “you never know how things are going to turn out, progress is episodic and not linear, and getting something done is better than waiting for the perfect thing to get done.”

He is most frustrated that the economic downturn interrupted such a positive development act, yet when he looks back he reflects that nobody could have predicted that ASU downtown would play such a huge role, or that the light rail would be such a force.

“Honestly,” he says, “I never could have imagined that I could have taken the light rail to work in the morning. Having that come to fruition is beyond my wildest dreams.”

What wild dreams does the next generation of leaders have?