Will the third time be the charm?

The Oxford Downtown Development Authority (DDA) board hopes so.

Last week, the board voted 7-2 to extend an employment offer to Glenn Pape, of Howell, for the DDA executive director position that’s been vacant since early February. DDA Chair Sue Bossardet and Secretary Susan Schurr cast the dissenting votes.

“I think I can make this (downtown) the showcase for Oakland County,” he told the board.

Pape, who’s had a lengthy career in education, planning and economic development, was one of two candidates interviewed by the board during its July 17 regular meeting.

The other candidate was Highland resident Cassie Blascyk, who volunteers as a member of the Highland DDA board and works in interior design and sales.

Pape is the third person to which the DDA board has offered the director position since March. The other two candidates declined, one for medical reasons and the other because he was upset that his interview was conducted during an open meeting and publicized by electronic and print media.

Since September 2016, Pape has been a private planning consultant working with communities on issues such as downtown redevelopment, placemaking, parking management, retail market assessments and public engagement. He’s been doing business under the name Data Driven Urban Design.

“My strength is placemaking and creating a place that’s attractive to people – businesses want to move there and people want to move there and the people want to linger in those places,” Pape said.

Prior to consulting, he worked for Michigan State University (MSU) for 12 years in three different positions.

His most recent role was regional land policy educator for southeast Michigan from February 2009 through September 2016. He worked with various communities, providing education, technical assistance and project management for planning, zoning and economic development initiatives.

He told the DDA board he “spent a lot of time in distressed communities,” including Inkster, Hamtramck, Highland Park, Ecorse and River Rouge.

“My last five years with MSU, it was kind of (about) where the governor’s office wanted to send me in order to fix things,” Pape explained. “I was both part of the placemaking team and part of their fiscal sustainability team, so we would drop into a community, fix their finances by fixing their codes and trying to fix their downtowns.”

On the other end of the spectrum, he has experience working in more affluent areas such as downtown Suttons Bay in northern Michigan.

Before MSU, Pape was a private planning consultant working with various townships developing master plan updates and zoning amendments. He did that from January 2002 to April 2004.

From May 2000 to January 2002, Pape served as the director of education for the Michigan Society of Planning, a chapter of the American Planning Association.

Pape has a bachelor’s degree in economics, which he earned from Central Michigan University (CMU) in 1995. He’s also done graduate work in economics at CMU and MSU, and graduate work in urban design and real estate at the University of Miami.

He made it clear to the board that he’s definitely a guy who values numbers and uses them.

“I like to look at the data,” Pape said. “I don’t tend to like to look at things and just say, ‘Well, this is what people have said.’ I like to say, ‘Well, what’s the data behind this?’”

He believes analyzing data can help communities figure out “what they can do better in order to reach their goals.”

As the DDA director, Pape would be responsible for managing a $398,100 budget. He told the board he’s comfortable doing that.

“I ran my own department at Michigan State University for two years,” he said. “We had about a $3 million budget. I was the person who was in charge of making sure we kept (to that budget).”

When it comes to grants, Pape said, “I haven’t done much grant writing in the last 10 years,” but “prior to that, I did quite a bit.”

“I’m familiar with MSHDA (Michigan State Housing Development Authority) programs, the MEDC (Michigan Economic Development Corporation) programs, the MDOT (Michigan Department of Transportation) programs,” he said. “I’ve written successful grants in all of those areas.”

Pape admitted that “historic preservation is not my strong suit.”

But what he’s done in other communities is develop codes that help “reinforce those historic characteristics” of buildings. He believes in the “functional hybrid” approach, which means maintaining a historic facade and interior, but still being practical and useful from a retail standpoint and handicapped accessibility.

When asked what type of relationship he’d like to have with the DDA board as director, Pape replied, “Well, that really depends on what role you want to play because this is your community.”

“I’m a technical expert, but you’re the local expert,” he explained. “I don’t know every single player in the community and so, I would look at the board as being my resource and my driving focus for the community because I don’t have the social network within this town to get everything accomplished. You folks do.”

“If everybody on the DDA board gets 10 people to show up at a public meeting, that’s 90 people at a public meeting, They’re going to ask their friends to show up and that’s what makes a successful meeting where you can get things accomplished,” Pape added.

Finding out who the people are “that make things happen in this community” would be his first priority.

“My second step would be to sit down and have a cup of coffee with all those people,” said Pape, who noted he wants to learn everything from their complaints to their vision for the downtown.

Pape noted he doesn’t believe there is such a thing as a “perfect relationship” between the director and board because “if there’s not some contention, we don’t move forward.”

“If everybody’s happy, you’re at status quo and there’s no such thing as status quo,” he said. “If you’re being static, you’re actually losing ground because if you’re not constantly driving, moving forward and advancing what you’re trying to do, you’re in a downward spiral. There is no stasis.”

“I like to challenge people when I work with communities,” Pape continued. “I like to challenge what their standard thinking is, conventional wisdom, sacred cows, whatever you want to call it. I like to push that boundary. I also like to lead from the front, which means when the community gets mad, I sometimes take a lot of slings and arrows.”

When asked what would happen to his consulting business should he take the director job, Pape told the board, “I would just simply subcontract out all of my existing work with friends of mine who I beat for the bids.”

“I wouldn’t keep it on the side,” he noted.

If he accepted the job, Pape indicated it wouldn’t take him long to start. “I need about four days to move some contracts,” he said.

Since 2003, the DDA has had six directors. Four resigned for other positions, one quit to start a family and one was chopped due to budget cuts. The last director, Joe Frost, left earlier this year to take a job with Main Street Oakland County.