Self-Taught Manager Brings Smart-Growth Advocacy to Ventura

In 20 years as a self-taught expert on urban redevelopment, Rick Cole has touted ideas once dismissed as radical but that are increasingly embraced by the mainstream in local government.

Cole, named last month as Ventura’s new city manager, has become one of the nation’s best-known advocates of so-called smart growth -- the clustering of homes, stores and offices in pedestrian-oriented communities -- and new urbanism, which promotes denser housing in cities as an alternative to suburban sprawl.

As mayor and city councilman in Pasadena during the heart of its economic revival in the 1980s and ‘90s, Cole is credited with helping to save the historic Old Town business district and pulling together divergent groups to plot a long-term strategy for future growth.

“He personally changed the agenda in Pasadena,” said Don McIntyre, who was city manager in Pasadena for nearly two decades.

Then, as city manager in Azusa since 1998, Cole gained attention for breathing life into a tired blue-collar San Gabriel Valley community by convincing developers to build the city’s first new stores, houses and industrial parks in decades -- and for including hundreds of average residents in the planning process.

Not everyone was happy. Cole helped revive a huge housing project in Azusa that voters had previously rejected, pushing a scaled-down version that reflected new urbanist concepts by creating more open space and placing 1,250 condos and houses on smaller lots.

Cole said the city was reinventing itself. “We’re not going to be considered the armpit anymore,” he said.

But critics said they wanted no part of his higher-density concepts, preferring fewer, more expensive houses on larger lots -- the suburban pattern since World War II.

Azusa already has its share of affordable housing, say critics of Cole’s idea.

“He’s into this new urbanism,” said Lana Grizzell, a real estate broker and spokeswoman for Azusans for Responsible Growth, which opposes the project. “He tried to morph us into Pasadena east.”

Over the last two decades, Cole, 50, has impressed admirers as a visionary whose passion for urban reform has persuaded even rivals that change was necessary. “He’s not a politician; he’s a community activist,” said Ventura Mayor Brian Brennan. “So we’re comrades in arms.”

But to others, he represents more idea than follow-through. “I think he has very good ideas, but there were people in Azusa who said he likes to start things, but he’s very poor about finishing them,” said Ventura City Councilman Jim Monahan, who opposed hiring Cole.

But Cole said the decision by Ventura’s council to hire him demonstrated how well his background checked out and whether he was suited for the job.

“I feel like a kid in a candy store,” he said. “A city manager has an unparalleled opportunity to make good things happen.”

Within the world of city planners and urban experts, Cole’s work has drawn attention. He has spoken at more than 400 professional forums and conferences on the future of American cities.

At a forum last summer, former Ventura Mayor Ray DiGuilio pulled Cole aside for an hourlong chat about how he might fit as the architect of Ventura’s future.

“He has a bit of the ‘wow!’ factor,” DiGuilio said of Cole, who starts work in Ventura on April 26. “He’s a lot of people’s go-to guy when it comes to smart growth. He’s a dynamic speaker. He’s innovative. And he’s not afraid to push the envelope out there a ways.”

Cole was educated as a journalist, but never really worked as one. He is considered an urban planning expert, but is not trained in that specialty. He is a smart, sharp-tongued fellow who follows his own instincts to such a degree that he didn’t hold a permanent, full-time job until he was 30 years old and running for City Council in Pasadena, his hometown.

He preferred to write as a freelancer, volunteer for political causes and campaigns, and for three months head then-Cleveland Mayor Dennis Kucinich’s housing rehabilitation office.

A lifelong activist who thumbed his nose at the status quo even as a precocious kid, Cole took on the Pasadena establishment.

He backed changes in City Council elections that gave racial minorities more political power. He criticized the Tournament of Roses, saying it was “totally controlled by aging white men.” He helped stop developers who wanted to tear down historic buildings. He flew with Pasadena police to intercept state helicopters spraying malathion.

In the end, he parlayed 12 years of leadership on the council and three as regional director of an urban policy research group, into a city manager’s job in Azusa without a day’s experience as a professional city administrator.

“He turned out to be a fabulous leader; he delivered,” said Azusa Mayor Cristina Madrid. “He created a vision for this city. He engaged the citizens and the business community. He gave people here a feeling of self-esteem. He brought in a caliber of people we normally would not see because of his cutting-edge personality.”

Cole’s ideas were what attracted Ventura officials to him.

“The thing that many of us found attractive about Rick was that he is such a strong proponent of smart-growth principles and is tuned into planning,” said Ventura City Councilman Carl Morehouse, himself a professional planner for Ventura County government. “Growth is always such a major battleground in this town.”

The last two Ventura city councils began to back the concept of self-contained smart-growth neighborhoods less reliant on the automobile, Morehouse said. Now, the city is working toward a new blueprint for growth that includes a unifying design and unique identity for the downtown, and an emphasis on building within the city, not pushing the limits outward, he said.

“I think Rick provides the impetus to push us to the next level,” Morehouse said.

Cole and Morehouse, along with Councilman Bill Fulton, are considered experts in planning matters and are advocates of the same type of new urban designs. Fulton, a nationally recognized planning writer, said he thought Cole was the right manager at the right time in Ventura.

“We’re professional friends,” said Fulton, who first met Cole in 1986, when he was a West Hollywood planning commissioner and Cole was that city’s marketing consultant. “We’re both card-carrying new urbanists and smart-growth advocates.”

But Fulton said he had to be convinced that Cole’s planning acumen could translate into effective daily management.

“Could he really run city government? Was he capable of decisive leadership? That was a hard sell for me,” Fulton said. But background checks in Azusa changed his mind, Fulton said. “When he first became city manager, he had to deal with a sex scandal involving his police chief, one of the most popular guys in the city, and he persuaded the chief to leave.”

Two Ventura council members, Monahan and Christy Weir, preferred another candidate with more administrative experience, Santa Maria City Manager Tim Ness.

“Cole’s a journalist, and that’s not the background I was looking for,” said Monahan, a councilman for 26 years, speaking Friday from a smart-growth conference in Central California.

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Profile: Rick Cole

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Born: June 27, 1953, in suburban Detroit.

Education: bachelor’s degree, American studies, Occidental College, Los Angeles, 1978; master’s degree, journalism, Columbia University, New York City, 1979.

Career: city manager,Ventura, effective April 26; city manager, Azusa, 1998-present; Southern California director, Local Government Commission, 1995-1998; mayor and city councilman, Pasadena, 1983-95; director, Urban Laboratory, 1990-94; executive director, West Hollywood Marketing Corp., 1986-89; senior deputy, Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alatorre, 1986; co-founder and executive vice president, Pasadena Weekly, 1983-84; field deputy, Pasadena Councilman Jess Hughston, 1981-82; contributing editor, L.A. Weekly, 1980-82; director, Central Office of Housing Rehab Loans, Cleveland, 1979.

Family: wife, Katherine Aguilar Perez, executive director Transportation and Land Use Collaborative of Southern California; son, Diego, 7, and twin daughters, Antonia and Lucia, 5.

Hobbies: “voracious reader;” California native plant gardener.