It's no Longer Coffey Time

Dan Coffey's Anchorage

Well if you had not seen the mayoral election results from this Tuesday, it's not over yet. With Ethan Berkowitz and Amy Demboski pulling away from the rest of the pack with the most votes, the two will face each other in a Cinco de Mayo election to see who gets to be Anchorage's next mayor. What is worth noting, however, and this is the reason why I even make a post about this topic on a non-political blog, is what happened to Dan Coffey. Berkowitz and Andrew Halcro got into the race in January this year. Demboski declared her candidacy last August. And Mr. Coffey? He started campaigning in October... of 2013! Dan Coffey's campaign was as long as many presidential campaigns. Even the race for governor isn't this long. And like a presidential campaign, Coffey did indeed rack up quite a bit of dough from his relentless fundraising drive. In all, his war chest collected over $300,000, far outpacing any of the candidates. Finally, after one year and six months, it was election night. Coffey was looking giddy as he unexpectedly inserted  himself in a Channel 2 live shot Tuesday afternoon at a busy intersection crowded with sign wavers. But it is safe to say the happiness soon wore off as the election tally that night revealed him to finish... in last place (among the main contenders). Dan Coffey was Mayor Dan Sullivan's hand-picked successor to the municipal throne. What happened?

And it is this relationship between the mayor and Dan Coffey that makes AnchorageJoop jubilant in his election night implosion. You may remember that not long after Sullivan took the mayors office in the late 2000s, he hired his old buddy Dan Coffey to review the newly rewritten Title 21 codes. With Title 21, the city's design and building review standards, having just gone through a decade-long review in which developers and the general public had their feedback taken into account, the newly minted code was thought to finally be completed. It was a compromise between developers who fought against added regulations and the people of the city who fought against loosening regulations that would adversely affect their way of life. But with Mayor Begich gone and the conservative Sullivan in, Coffey was unexpectedly hired as an outside consultant to review and revise the newly completed Title 21. Needless to say, a number of codes and standards, which had already gone through a long and exhausting review process, were quickly nixed by Coffey. And not surprisingly, Coffey swung in favor of developers. Among the major changes made was Coffey's eradication of the designated density zones. So now, instead of having high-rise buildings only in midtown and downtown, you can now have a 25-story high-rise go up next to your house in south Anchorage. In addition, sidewalks no longer have to be on both sides of the street, thanks to Coffey's backroom revisionism. Ivan Moore captured the spirit of the frustration at the time with his column Bubba's Anchorage or yours?

Of course, this is just one of numerous other complaints that I and many others have had toward Mr. Coffey. As a man of low morals, Dan Coffey voted against the anti-discrimination ordinance, just as his master, Dan Sullivan, had wanted. Having spent years leading CHARR, a restaurant and bar industry group, it was certain that he would, as mayor, continue to protect corrupt bar owners and fight new regulations that promote public safety as he did when leading the corrupt CHARR. And let's not get started on the recorded phone call conversation in which Coffey talks about paying assembly members to vote a certain way. It was this phone conversation, recorded thanks to Dan Coffey's butt-dialing into the late Allen Tesche's answering machine, that is believed to be the biggest factor in his loss.

With this chapter in Anchorage history appearing to come to an end, what pleases me most is that even in the afterlife, Allen Tesche can still take down Coffey. Here's to you, Assemblyman Tesche.

Seriously Dan? You're going to go there?

Before I get into it, it should be explained that Dan Coffey, the former Assembly member who was hired by Dan Sullivan to mutilate the democratically formed Title 21 codes, is like the uncle at the table during the holidays who makes the rest of the family cringe whenever he says something. Now I'm not talking politically incorrect tirade or anything on that level (though those too), rather everything can be boiled down to a simplistic solution regardless of whether you're an expert or not as far as he's concerned. The Anchorage School District needs more funding, Dans response: when I was a kid, we went to school in a quonset hut, and we came out fine (paraphrasing for I don't remember his exact words in both quotes). Does mixed-use work? Dan said something along the lines of: the only mixed-use building I see in town has no businesses in the ground floor. He was referring to the newish mixed-use building in Mountain View which actually does have businesses occupying the ground level including a GCI Store opening soon. But never mind that. Dan Coffey says he see's no businesses in the ground floor, therefore it's official: mixed-use doesn't work! All has been settled.

After the Anchorage Press published Ivan Moore's column that was critical about Coffey's developer friendly revisioning of Title 21 a few months ago, the Press kindly gave Dan the opportunity to have a response. Having read it, I thought 'hey, maybe Coffey does know what he's doing'. The credentials and experience related toward planning and zoning that he lists did seem more than adequate. But it turns out I should've known better. As if some of his proposed changes made public earlier this week weren't outrageous, he revives the Uncle Dan character I had long known as he throws the McCarthy Card at us. That's right. Responding to an interview question, Coffey states: "I don't believe central planning works. It didn't work for the USSR and it probably won't work very well for us". That one I can tell you did not need paraphrasing. I remember saying in an earlier post a year or two ago that Anchorage's development patterns were stuck in a 1950s mindset... I guess we now know whose mindset that is. All his credibility related to planning and zoning just went down the drain. It was thanks to Ivan Moore's latest column that this Coffeyism had surfaced. But indeed I really would like to thank Ivan Moore for giving attention to the Title 21 issue over the past few months. It's not a sexy issue that would grab the attention of readers, and I know they have papers to sell.. err.. to give away.

But I can't help but to go with Coffey's thinking here. Taking it to its logical conclusions, the Haussmann Plan that restructured Paris must have been communist. The same goes with the Commissioners Plans of 1811 for Manhattan. Bleeding red, they are. And that must surely explain why the world absolutely shuns the urban horror show that is Paris while embracing a good ole red white and blue freedom loving city like Houston which really has no zoning regulations to speak of (can you tell?). Even the early planners of Anchorage had to have been communist what with their pinko street grid that have letter streets running north and south and numbered streets east and west. Interesting tidbit: was actually the Alaska Railroad that laid out the grid. Guess that explains them being state owned, no?