With fingerprints all over city’s growth, Bevelheimer stepping down as director of planning and development

QUINCY — Chuck Bevelheimer worked with four mayors, hundreds of employees and thousands of citizens during his 30-year career as the director of planning and development for the City of Quincy.

When announcing his plans to retire at the end of the month, Bevelheimer said the number of potential headaches in his job were reduced by his staff and the mentors who first gave him guidance.

“A great staff makes the difference,” he said. “Honestly, there have been very few heartburn moments as the planning director. I had great mentors like Jim Mentesti and Dick Klusmeyer when I first started. Those guys, when you look at partnerships and working through the issues, were great at helping me navigate staff.”

That helped him navigate the changes between mayors.

“John Spring had a different view than Chuck Scholz, and Kyle Moore obviously had a different perspective, but I was able to get along with all of them,” Bevelheimer said. “The relationship I have with Mayor (Mike) Troup and the rest of the mayors has always been good. I enjoyed working with all of them. We got a lot of things done.”

Now, at age 67, Bevelheimer is ready to step away. He wants to spend time with a new grandchild, travel with his wife Jacqui, possibly help his brother build a house in Alaska, visit a sister in Champaign or go hunting and fishing in northern Michigan.

“We’re just going to take it easy for a year and kind of figure out what the lay of the land looks like,” he said. “I’m not going to commit to anything.”

Troup says he plans for Bevelheimer’s replacement to be named next month. He said consideration will be given to Community Development Planner Jason Parrott.

“My first or second month is when we started with GMX (Real Estate Group, which helped bring Target to Quincy),” Troup said. “Jason was phenomenal with getting into the details. He proved his worth to me during that whole process.”

Planning and development department was created in 1994

Bevelheimer worked for Two Rivers Regional Council for two years before taking an assistant planning director position in a Michigan county near Detroit in 1986. He returned to direct Quincy’s new planning and development department in 1994.

As he reviewed his accomplishments in 30 years, Bevelheimer was most pleased with downtown revitalization, saying the first TIF (tax increment financing) district created by the city has worked well.

“The proof is in the pudding,” he said. “We’ve done something like 30 infrastructure improvements in the downtown since 1994. That was a team effort between the city, the administrations and the councils, but we had to build that TIF base to get there.”

One of the first items Bevelheimer addressed was zoning along Broadway, which had a mixture of commercial development mixed with residential plans in adjoining areas and existing homes.

“That used to be a much more volatile issue than it is now,” he said. “We still have our fits and spits about the Broadway corridor, but it’s nowhere near what was back in the mid-90s, when we were constantly beating our heads against the wall with residential being encroached by commercial and how we managed that. By and large, that issue has been well addressed and well figured out.”

‘What we’re doing now (with housing) isn’t working’

Bevelheimer wishes he could have done more for the city’s housing shortage.

“We’ve put a ton of work into housing rehab grants over the years,” he said. “We’ve done something like 360 projects in the (1^st, 2^nd and 7^th) wards with something like $7 million worth of investment. And still, as I go through the neighborhoods, I don’t see it. It’s a drop in the bucket of what we need to do.

“We went through that whole housing effort, trying to get the public and the council in support of some sort of housing registration, yet we’re no closer now than we were then. Some of the same issues still come up. We have properties in very poor condition that are being leased for occupied housing. I would never live there, and we shouldn’t expect the public to live there either, but we just can’t seem to get over that hurdle.”

Bevelheimer knows housing will be one of several topics debated during the campaign for the upcoming mayoral election. However, without a mindset change by the aldermen, he doesn’t see the housing issue improving.

“The mayor, by himself, can’t get that done,” he said. “It takes at least eight aldermen to support doing something different than what we’re doing now. What we’re doing now is not working.”

Planning takes patience

As the city continues to try to make improvements to the riverfront, the southwest portion of the city and to the east on Broadway, Bevelheimer insists planning takes patience.

“People want to see results,” he said. “In this day and age, everything is ‘Hit a button, get a result.’ I know the public wish wishes that they we could do things faster, quicker, sooner. It’s just that there’s a process that we go through, In the planning world, you really have to lay the framework, the groundwork, to get something done. The downtown is a perfect example of that. What we’re trying to do on the south side historic district or on the riverfront would be a huge benefit for the downtown. All of those things build momentum on top of momentum.”

Bevelheimer said one of the most disappointing projects he was involved with was the hydropower plant backed by the Spring administration that never got off the ground in 2011. 

“We put a lot of time into it and didn’t get anything out of it,” he said. “We put public treasure, more than $5 million, into that. It hurt John and his re-election campaign, and it was hard to swallow at the end of the day. It was hard to hear our permit was denied. A lot of time, a lot of effort, a lot of public meetings, a lot of ass-chewing from the public.”

Bevelheimer also regrets not accomplishing more with riverfront development.

“That still nags me today,” he said. “Maybe I didn’t put enough time in, but it’s just been slow to get off the ground. We have a lot of players there — the city, county and the Park District. It’s going to take a team effort to get anything done. We’ve got a good group of citizens who are working hard on it. It’s just pulling the pieces together.”

Plenty of development opportunities remain for successor

Bevelheimer says his replacement won’t have a problem finding development opportunities, ranging from 54th and Broadway to a possible hotel opportunity on the riverfront to improving water pressure on the east side of the city.

“The downtown still has so much opportunity,” he said. “We’ve just sort of touched the surface of what can be done. There are so many buildings that are unused and underutilized.”

Working behind the scenes is Bevelheimer’s preferred method of operation, which explains why he won’t miss Monday City Council meetings.

“I’m honestly tired of the Monday night dog and pony show or whatever you want to call it,” he said. “As soon as the cameras came on, it became a different process of public engagement. There are more public pronouncements and less civic engagement. The big development issues, like Target, we worked that six ways to Sunday with the aldermen. They knew exactly what was coming. That’s the way it has to happen, and they respected that throughout the process. But there’s just other stuff that happens, and it just gets off the rails fast.

“There’s nothing wrong with a good debate. On Monday night, I may have a council member just pepper me with questions like I’m being cross-examined. Then the next day or two days, they’ll call me back and say, ‘Hey, I need this, this and this.’ My job is to help them. It’s all water off my back. Let’s get the question answered and say hi to them next week, because it’s a new day in the planning world.”