News David Heurtel Bows Out
posted by on August 28 at 12:48 PM
David Heurtel, deputy director of Seattle Center, is resigning. He intends to stay in the city but is not leaving for another job.
“There wasn’t a watershed moment or some drama,” he said. “I’ve just been looking at where my life is going and where the Center is going and decided it’s time to turn the page and let somebody else take over.”
Heurtel came to the Center three years ago from Montreal, where he had been working as an attorney in the entertainment industry. Since then, good stuff’s been happening at the Center—the Vera Project and SIFF Cinema moved in, the Century 21 Committee started talking about knocking down some of the ugliness (like Memorial Stadium) and building a more park-like Center. (I wrote about Heurtel, Century 21, and the future of the ugliness in this story.)
“Vera, SIFF, the economic impact study—that’s just three examples of things I’m proud of that we all worked together for,” Heurtel said. “We’ve quintupled sponsorship revenue and we’ve turned around the way this town talks about the Center… there’s more optimism about the future.”
Still, he’s going: “I’m not leaving because I have something lined up,” he said. “I’m leaving because it’s time for me to go.”
Dave Meinert, a music community businessman and activist who got to know Heurtel while working on the Vera move, says his departure is a loss for the Center. “Heurtel is a visionary, entrepreneurial guy,” Meinert said. “He brought exciting changes to Seattle Center and there haven’t been exciting changes there for decades.”
“But,” Meinert added, “sometimes entrepreneurial, visionary people have difficulty working in large bureaucracies.”
Can we get Disney back in on this?
Brendan: didn't you write this just the other day....
"When people talk about the past, they talk about Anderson; when they talk about the future, they talk about Heurtel. They almost never talk about Nellams."
Care to rewrite your prediction?
Damn, I'm really sorry to see David go. He brought new energy, and exciting ideas to the Seattle Center, particularly in music, and multi-media.
Hope he'll stick around Seattle.
-Peter
Dear Editor's Note:
Not really, as it wasn't a prediction. As of that writing, and until about 24 hours ago, people DID talk about Heurtel when they talked about the future, saying the kinds of things that Peter says in comment #3.
David is a smart, talented, energetic person who has added incredible value to Seattle Center -- this is a loss for all of us.
Comments Closed
In order to combat spam, we are no longer accepting comments on this post (or any post more than 14 days old).