17S And The Rebirth Of Seattle -- Wes Uhlman's Legacy Revisited As Paul Schell Begins Job As City's Mayor

Twenty years later, Wes Uhlman has regained his anonymity. He strolls unrecognized through Pioneer Square, where nobody stops to shake his hand or to complain about panhandlers or potholes or barking dogs.

Who knows or cares that, if not for Uhlman, there would be no Pioneer Square? Who remembers that those stately Victorians would have been torn down and replaced by a pair of glass skyscrapers surrounded by asphalt?

The former Seattle mayor harbors no resentment over his fellow citizens' short memories.

"I know," he says. "I move around the city and see where I made a difference."

One fellow citizen who also remembers is the new mayor, Paul Schell. As he moves into City Hall's 12th-floor executive suite this week, Schell's model will be neither Norm Rice nor Charles Royer, but Wes Uhlman.

For Seattle, the Uhlman years of 1970-77 were an urban renaissance, says Schell. "Virtually every civic initiative that now defines Seattle happened in about five years in the mid-'70s."

Schell lists some of them. Restoration of Pioneer Square and Pike Place Market. Freeway Park. Public funding for the arts and historic preservation. The neighborhoods movement. The I-90 Floating Bridge and Central Area lid. The Kingdome. The aquarium. The beginnings of a rebirth for downtown and the Denny Regrade. The resurgence of Metro transit, including the free-ride zone downtown. Women and minorities in the police and fire departments. Women and

minorities running city departments. Greater attention to senior citizens.

Many of these projects, especially Pioneer Square and the Market, became national models, earning Seattle a reputation for urban innovation.

"No mayor will ever be able to put together that kind of list again," Schell remarks, somewhat wistfully. "And all this from a mayor that nobody ever liked very much."

During his eight years, Uhlman's curt personality and use of raw political power made plenty of enemies. When they refused to play his way, Uhlman abruptly canned his fire chief, Jack Richards, and licensing director Virginia Galle - antagonizing entire departments in the process.

Yet, by the time he left office, most of his critics were forced to acknowledge the obvious: Wes Uhlman was Seattle's first strong mayor, and probably its most successful.

The city that Uhlman took over in 1970 bore only a vague resemblance to today's. It was a sleepy, parochial seaport with a deteriorating waterfront. There was no Microsoft or Starbucks, but a failed baseball franchise, a handful of galleries, a couple of theaters and an ugly, '50s-style City Hall whose design was borrowed from Texas. Pioneer Square and Pike Place Market were dilapidated relics doomed to the wrecking ball. Progress was defined by construction of Seafirst's towering black box at Fourth Avenue and Madison Street, and by a map that called for more freeways.

The city's economic life was dominated by Boeing, its politics by a cadre of gray-haired businessmen who sat around the Rainier Club and decided who would be mayor.

Uhlman, on the other hand, was a young Seattle lawyer and part-time legislator best known for his silvery, long hair. In Olympia, he had learned the mysteries of political power and concluded that Seattle was handicapped by mayors who had none. As a state senator, he quietly pushed through legislation in 1969 to transfer critical budget authority to the mayor. Then, at age 34, he announced he was running for the job.

The establishment, including both daily newspapers, backed 63-year-old Mort Frayne, a genial businessman. But Uhlman assembled a coalition of young newcomers and senior citizens and won easily by 43,000 votes.

The city he took over was at its lowest ebb. There were race riots and bombings in the Central Area, ignited by "redlining," the practice of withholding home loans in predominantly African-American neighborhoods. There were massive anti-war demonstrations that spilled onto the freeway. The police department was shaken by revelations of gambling and vice payoffs. And there was the congressional decision not to fund a supersonic airliner, coupled with a slump in the airline business, leading to massive layoffs at Boeing and a deep local recession.

Soon after Uhlman took over, he was briefed by a city official about the plan to level Pioneer Square and build two glass towers surrounded by parking lots.

"I said: `We're not going to do that,' " Uhlman recalls. "He said it's already approved by the City Council. I said: `I don't care. This is where Seattle was born, and you don't just tear down your birthplace.' "

Within weeks, he had muscled the necessary council votes to pass an ordinance designating Pioneer Square a historic district, and appointed a full-time aide to oversee its rejuvenation.

"People called me a communist, taking away their property rights. And I was taking away those rights, but there was a greater good. And now I think the business community agrees."

Uhlman describes himself as an "entrepreneur," rather than an idea man. Most of his achievements were not his ideas. The best example is the Pike Place Market. For months, he supported the city's plan to tear down the aging structure and replace it with office buildings. But when voters decided 2-1 to restore it, Uhlman promptly embraced the idea and appointed a young lawyer named Paul Schell to make sure it was done right.

For all the handicaps, Uhlman also had lots of help. Pioneer Square and the Market were saved with generous federal grants, money made available by a direct line to Sen. Warren Magnuson, who chaired the key Appropriations Committee.

There were other advantages. Unlike most U.S. cities, Seattle was salvageable. There was minimal flight to the suburbs, and those who did flee were promptly replaced by young professionals who were, themselves, fleeing troubled cities around the country. Seattle was open-minded and manageable. Even the Boeing bust had its benefits: Those newcomers could buy view homes for less than $20,000. And they did, helping to preserve neighborhoods such as Wallingford and Mount Baker.

He also benefited from turnover on the City Council, where tired incumbents were being replaced with reform-minded newcomers such as Phyllis Lamphere, Bruce Chapman and Randy Revelle.

Uhlman made the most of those advantages. Federal dollars helped him recruit dozens of ambitious young idealists inspired by the likes of President Kennedy. And he remade the mayor's office to make full use of them.

"He understood that the budget authority created a strong-mayor system," says Charles Royer, who inherited the job in 1978. "He was typecast for the job - politically savvy, TV smart, silver-haired, comfortable in the national spotlight."

He was decisive and a good listener, recalls Dave Marriot, who was Uhlman's press aide. "When a decision needed to be made, he would pull key staff into his office and go around the room, listening to every point of view. Then he would make up his mind and away we go."

Uhlman drew flak for spending city dollars on arts, and on social programs aimed at senior citizens, women and minorities. But his focus was usually on hard projects.

"In the end, I think the physical city mattered more to him than the social programs," says former Uhlman adviser Dan Dingfield. "No matter how tight the budget was, he insisted on maintaining streets and bridges."

There were failures, as well. Uhlman tried to build a West Seattle Bridge and Westlake Center, but both jobs were left for successors. Controversial appointments and an aggressive minority-hiring program antagonized the police and fire departments to the extent that firefighters attempted to have him recalled.

"I could have been less combative about affirmative action," he says now. "I might have accomplished more with less pain."

But his biggest disappointment was that voters twice rejected rail transit. "I went out before the vote and begged people to vote for this thing, but people were frightened by the economy," he recalls. "It was a big mistake. The federal money that would have built our system went to Atlanta instead, and it would have worked better in Seattle."

Uhlman's success can be attributed to his political instincts and his understanding of political power, says Dingfield. "A good mayor has to have a clear vision of what he wants to accomplish, and a determination to do what is necessary to get it done, even if it means ruffling some feathers."

In the case of the I-90 bridge, Uhlman was caught between the business community, which insisted on a third Lake Washington bridge, and younger people who believed that 10 lanes of concrete would scar both the lake and inner-city neighborhoods.

"Most people assumed that it was dead, because nobody could agree on what to do with it," Dingfield says. "Uhlman decided to scale it down and add the lids. And that's why it eventually got built."

A generation later, Uhlman has mellowed considerably. He lives quietly on Queen Anne with his wife, Carolyn Purnell, former director of Metro. He builds and operates apartment buildings, mostly in the Puget Sound area. For relaxation, he grows prize dahlias, keeps bees, hands out jars of home-grown honey to friends, vacations at his Waikiki condo.

Schell, meanwhile, is trying to figure out how to be a mayor in Uhlman's mold.

Uhlman understood power, and how to use it, says Schell. He surrounded himself with smart people willing to work long hours for mediocre pay. While his own personality was cool and remote, his political personality was open-minded and decisive.

"He was not particularly creative himself, but he created a climate of creativity and innovation that opened Seattle to things that never would have happened without him," Schell says.

Such bursts of political energy come in cycles, Schell adds. Royer and Rice had their strengths - Royer as a skilled communicator and a national spokesman for cities, Rice as an urban peacemaker who would ease the way for other minorities in high political office, he says. Together, they helped to consolidate the renaissance begun in the 1970s. But neither left office with a report card anything like Uhlman's.

Conversely, Uhlman acknowledges that he was never as popular as his successors. "People who go into politics because they want to be loved quickly find out they can't accomplish much."

That's why Uhlman campaigned for Schell last fall, and why he expects Schell to be a good mayor.

"He doesn't need the job," Uhlman says with a shrug. "He already has his friends, and he lives a full life. So he won't be afraid to make the necessary enemies."

Ross Anderson: 206-464-2061. E-mail: rand-new@seatimes.com