Raleigh Mayor Baldwin looks back on lessons learned and progress made | Opinion

During her five years as Raleigh’s mayor, Mary-Ann Baldwin says the most significant lesson she learned was this: Don’t second-guess yourself.

That lesson came in May of 2020 during the Black Lives Matter demonstrations triggered by the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. After the first night of protests shattered business fronts downtown, Baldwin wanted to declare a curfew. She talked herself out of it. The next night brought more destruction and clashes with police.

“My gut was telling me the whole time to call for a curfew and I didn’t follow my gut,” she told me.

In April, she faced another big decision: Whether to seek reelection despite her recent treatment for breast cancer and her husband’s health problems. She said at the time: “My head and my heart were in conflict.”

This time she went with what felt right. She decided not to run.

On Tuesday, Baldwin will preside at her last City Council meeting. Mayor-elect Janet Cowell will be sworn in as her successor in December.

Baldwin, 68, will hand over leadership with confidence in Cowell, 56, a former City Council member, state senator and state treasurer. “Janet has the experience, she knows how this works and she has the courage of her convictions,” she said.

Baldwin will continue to be involved in one of her top issues – affordable housing. She is the executive director of the Cooper Charitable Foundation, an organization that partners with other nonprofits to help people get into housing or avoid losing it. The job, Baldwin said, “enables me to do something that I’m passionate about.”

Although she will miss leading the city, Baldwin will not miss the weight of that role. The COVID pandemic hit shortly after her election as mayor. That eliminated public meetings and gave rise to complaints about a lack of communication. Advocates for single-family home neighborhoods accused her of being too close to developers who are reshaping the city.

But Baldwin counts far more high points than low ones in her tenure. Asked for her top two or three accomplishments, she said, “Oh, God, I probably have about 10.”

Her condensed list starts with the City Council approving zoning changes to promote more diverse housing in single-family home neighborhoods and increasing housing density along transit corridors. “Missing middle housing and trying to address housing affordability was probably our top accomplishment,” she said.

Also high on her list is the push for bus rapid transit lines. Construction of the first line is underway on New Bern Avenue in Southeast Raleigh. ”I can’t wait to see how that will really have positive impacts on the city,” she said.

Other highlights include passage of an $80 million bond for affordable housing and a $275 million bond for expanded parks and greenways.

There’s also the local-state agreement to create a $1 billion sports and entertainment district around the Lenovo Center, home of the Carolina Hurricanes. “It’s going to be a game changer,” she said. “It’s probably the largest economic development in the history of our city.”

Finally, Baldwin is proud that plans to expand the Convention Center and construction of an adjacent hotel and a new Red Hat Amphitheater are finally moving forward. “We’ve been talking about that for 10 years,” she said.

The expansion will help revitalize the downtown district around Fayetteville Street that was hard hit by the loss of office workers during and after the pandemic.

”If we don’t have a strong downtown, we don’t have a strong city,” she said.

As she leaves office, Baldwin offers this guidance to Cowell: “My advice would be to trust your gut, stand up for what you believe in, work with people and listen, but don’t let a small group of people take over. We have a bigger city — we’re a city of 500,000 people now – and we need to listen to all of them.”

Next: An interview with Raleigh Mayor-elect Janet Cowell