Paul Schell: Visionaries do not always make the best politicians

If your big city or small town gets discovered by an intense civic visionary, it could do a lot worse than ex-Seattle Mayor Paul Schell.

Schell, who died Sunday, was a Whidbey Island neighbor, so I could watch his work in Langley as well as his nearly 40 years’ influence shaping Seattle as both a private developer and public official.

He was a most unlikely politician: Schell so thin-skinned that shells did not bounce off him.

An example: The South Whidbey Record had a take-no-prisoners cartoonist who felt Schell was getting a bit too overbearing with his projects on the island. He suggested in drawings that Langley be renamed “Schellville” or even “Schelladelphia,” and lampooned a hardware store where Schell was going to install a stove as gathering place for old-timers. Schell could not get over the unfairness and cruelty of the drawings.

Yet, part of Schell’s deficiency at politics was that his eyes were focused on big-scale projects rather than the small-scale burnishing of image.

He gave us the Inn at Langley and the shops on 2nd Avenue (a famous local picture shows Boeing directors, including ex-Secretary of State George Schultz, landing by chopper to dine at the Inn). The generosity of Paul and Pam Schell helped make possible the Whidbey Center for the Arts.

During the last quarter of the 20th Century, it was hard to find a political office for which his chief political sponsor — Seattle Weekly founder David Brewster — had not nominated Paul Schell. He was overwhelmed by Charley Royer in his 1977 bid for Mayor. He prospered mightily in the private sector — helping build Langley, and guiding Cornerstone to widely admired projects in Tacoma and Portland — but did not have an opening to run again for 20 years until he won his single term as mayor in 1997.

Brewster was not finished when Schell became mayor. He envisioned Pam Schell taking charge of the arts in Seattle, christening the project “Pamelot.”

Paul Schell was an idealist, the son of a Lutheran parson and product of the John F. Kennedy 1960s. He could, at times, be too trusting and too naive.

An enduring image from the World Trade Organization mess: On the eve of the conference, Schell stood by a window at the Columbia Tower Club. Schell had lobbied for the global financial gathering. It was going to be one of those marquee events that would put Seattle on the map.

He watched a peaceful protest unfold far below, as young people in sea turtle costumes spilled onto 5th Avenue.

“Why are we afraid of our children?” Schell asked, as Port of Seattle boss Mic Dinsmore stood nearby grumping about the image of Seattle that was being conveyed to the world.

Schell would find his question answered the following day. Such was Seattle Police preparation, an (accurate) gag had it, that the anarchists were better organized. The then-mayor found himself in a nasty tiff with then-sheriff Dave Reichert.

Schell was responsible for much that DID put Seattle on the map. As head of Cornerstone Development, a Weyerhaeuser subsidiary, he launched the revival of Seattle’s 1st Avenue. He pressed for the first Libraries for All bond measure, and championed the widely admired Downtown Public Library. He was instrumental in the creation of the Olympic Sculpture Park on the Seattle waterfront.

As director of Seattle’s Department of Community Development, he pioneered the “calming” of streets with mini-garden obstacles designed to make drivers slow down. He challenged the “castle campus” philosophy of the University of Washington, urging it to better serve the state with satellite campuses.

Schell was an idea person who surrounded himself with other idea people.

The current administration of Mayor Ed Murray is on political red alert all of the time. Hizzoner is flanked by diverse supporters of whatever appointment/program he is announcing, with the mayor’s staff line up against the wall, a display pioneered by the first Mayor Daley in Chicago.

Schell had no savvy political advisers, and a disastrous communications staff until arrival of Roger Nyhus just a few months before the end of his term.

The staff allowed Schell to sleep through the Fat Tuesday riot, in which police held back and a young man was beaten to death just a few blocks from Schell’s condominium. That was followed by an incident at a community festival, in which Schell was struck in the face with a bullhorn.

As Seattle sought various forms of aid from the Clinton Administration, Mayor Schell endorsed the Democratic presidential bid of ex-Sen. Bill Bradley over Vice President Al Gore.

The White House struck back. When Bill Clinton came to speak at a Democratic fundraiser, he lauded King County Executive Ron Sims with praise. Sims sat beaming in the front row while Schell was consigned to a back row seat at the Rainier Club. If he were any further distant, the mayor would have been out on the street.

He not only lost his bid for reelection, but was eliminated in the September primary by Mark Sidran and Greg Nickels. He retreated in pain to exile on Whidbey Island.

But the guy realized a remarkable number of his dreams, and islanders and urbanites are the better off for it.

If you want to see Paul Schell’s legacy, look around — in downtown Langley and downtown Seattle.