Your MesaZona Blogger Goes Rogue > Anybody Else Miss Ex-Mayor Scott Smith?

Happened to enjoy a conversation over breakfast last week with an un-named colleague last week who brought up the subject in this post headline.
Like some unanticipated remarks that oftentimes liven-up face-to-face communications, this impromptu comment stimulated a follow-up response: Oh yeah, why?
We'll leave it to readers' imagination, but perhaps it's got something to do with the changing face of politics and leadership here in the New Urban Downtown Mesa. 

Scott Smith popped-up on your MesaZona blogger's radar screen back in December 2014 two weeks after my arrival here right in front of the entryway at Encore On First, the first new apartment complex downtown in 30 years that received the Real Estate Design Award 2014 for outstanding residential development that is affordable and attainable gaining praise in the real estate market driven by form-based zoning and transit-oriented development clustered around the expansion and extension of Valley Metro Light Rail service to the Central Mesa Business District - one of the outstanding achievements for Scott Smith during his political career and time in-office here

Appearing at the same grand opening was developer Charles Huellmantel, seen in the image to the left, who took an investment risk aligning with a coalition of public-private partnerships for financing a $30M project to realize a new vision for downtown as a great place to live in a burgeoning Arts-and-Entertainment district located along the line of public transit. Encore On First West opened adjacent to this 5-story building last year, both serving as a catalyst for further vertical housing options development south of Main Street.
While Encore On First did give rise for new housing options, Scott Smith also had other high ambitions for his time in-office. Some of those are highlighted in an article from November 2013 written by Jon Talton, who publishes on RogueColumnist.com
More than a few of his remarks, excerpted below, tell more about Scott Smith
Mesa rising
Mesa has landed an Apple factory and 2,000 jobs (provided the Gilbert school board goes along with the tax incentives), the latest in a series of triumphs as Phoenix falls into eclipse and the big issues are "pension spiking" and the "food tax."
Is "the city of wide streets and narrow minds" finally starting to punch at its weight?
Unlike most of the "boombergs" that have encircled Phoenix despite the aggressive annexation intended to prevent just that, Mesa always had a special identity. Settled by Mormons, Mesa had a distinctive set of small-businesses and agriculture-based industries and was surrounded by miles of citrus groves.
This began to change in the 1970s when the Superstition Freeway, as it built east, killed Main Street shops. Worse, the city inflicted a series of wounds on itself even as it notched huge population growth. . .
Instead of balancing industrial land use with residential, Mesa plowed under the groves for subdivisions. By the 2000s, most Mesans had to commute outside the city limits for work.
Mesa very nearly was left out of the starter line of light rail (WBIYB), but then-Mayor Keno Hawker persuaded a reluctant City Council to help fund one mile from Tempe into Mesa. The Mesa Arts Center was completed in 2005 in an effort to undo some of the damage to downtown, but it struggled.
By 2010, Mesa's population was more than 439,000. It was more populous than Cleveland, Cincinnati, St. Louis and Minneapolis but had none of those cities corporate or cultural assets — or great bones. The municipal building, an ugly office on Main, seemed to exemplify its lack of ambition.
That has changed under Mayor Scott Smith, the most effective and interesting public official in Arizona today.

Scott Smith with plans for Sloan Park

Or maybe it's a lesson-learned when a public figure gets elected to a local office with higher political ambitions to head up Arizona state government, endorsed by certain powers-that-be in his political base, yet gets defeated in the gamble to become governor.
The fact that Scott Smith is 'missed' here in Mesa might speak oodles about his initiatives to move Mesa forward as a motivated outsider who never served on the Mesa City Council. Scott Smith is a Game-Changer [now CEO of Valley Metro] but somehow the game here in Mesa just is not so dynamic with his second-string successor