In the 1970s, Portland decided to reject the script that so many American cities were following. The city, instead, decided to chart its own course, to embrace city life and reject suburban and rural sprawl.
It was a time of political catharsis.
"We went through this period of stupidity in which we were going to build 57 freeways," said Dick Feeney, a former TriMet lobbyist. "And then we had this period of enlightenment and change. And that's when Andy Cotugno came – just when we finished this gut-wrenching battle where everything had to do with transportation for almost 10 years."
Cotugno, the former Metro planning director and the mind behind many of Metro's planning efforts, is retiring this month after 37 years working for Portland's regional government. He served as Metro's transportation director from 1981 to 1998, then was director of Metro's Planning Department from 1998 until 2008. For the last eight years, he has been a policy advisor to the Metro chief operating officer.
In Cotugno's early days at Metro, transportation planning was no easy feat, Feeney said. Politicians still found their careers made or broken on transportation issues.
"Andy helped stitch this together," Feeney said. He helped foster a regional dialogue on transportation issues, a process that included consultations from technical experts at Metro's Transportation Policy Alternatives Committee to elected officials at the Joint Policy Advisory Committee on Transportation.
"This transportation consensus that Andy helped put together and monitor, it meant that the political catharsis we had in the 1970s disappeared," Feeney said.
"He has the unique ability – and I say unique because I don't know anyone else who has the skill and the prowess – to see the light through the lens of everyone's vantage point," said Lou Ogden, the longtime Tualatin mayor and former JPACT member. "It's one thing to understand their argument. It's another to see everybody's point of view."
Part of that process, Feeney said, was getting to know partners outside of policy meetings. The finance plan for the first MAX line, Feeney said, was drawn up on a paper placemat at an Italian restaurant. And JPACT's finance task force would often hash things out at Demetri's, a West Burnside haunt that let stakeholders and planners drop their guard, hoist a glass and talk it out.
"It was an interesting blending of the the formal, the required, the informal and recreational dynamic of regional decision-making," said U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer. "Andy fit right in."
Later, Cotugno would bring in folks to help him make pinot noir. The wine, Feeney said, was more than just a social lubricant.
"You have to build trust," Feeney said. "How do you build that trust? You build a community in which a lot of things are shared – the risks, the worries, the opportunities, and that means coming closer together. Frankly, a bottle of wine helps. It's a symbol for how you get through that barrier of suspicion, institutional bias, institutional paranoia."
Former Metro planning director Andy Cotugno, left, taught winemaking to Portland Mayor Charlie Hales, right.
One of Cotugno's winemaking apprentices is Portland Mayor Charlie Hales.
"The characteristics that show through as he instructs his apprentices making wine, shine through in his professional work," Hales said. "He's always patient, always looking for a good result for everyone. There's still good wine and bad wine, and there's good and bad transportation decisions. Andy knows the difference in both cases."
Once the visceral battles of transportation policy of the 1980s subsided, Cotugno shifted his focus toward integrating the region's land use plans with its transportation system. The Portland region's 2040 Growth Concept became the confluence of that, planning for apartments in transit corridors and maintaining single-family neighborhoods elsewhere.
"He devised an alternatives-analysis approach to 2040, which was very new and different for regional planning," said John Fregonese, a consultant who worked for Metro in the 1990s. "It was a big jump to go from alternatives analysis of transportation systems to scenarios for how the whole region would grow for 50 years."
Later, as a special advisor, Cotugno continued to be heavily involved in transportation planning, including the Southwest Corridor.
"It's like a light rail project, if it comes together," Ogden said. "He is very quick to point out that it's not just a transit project, it's a project that involves a shared investment strategy. It involves improvements on I-5, freeway lanes, surface roads. He doesn't just bring that up as a response where someone complains that we don't have enough road miles. He brings it up as an intrinsic component of the Southwest Corridor study."
Blumenauer said Cotugno's low-key, understated but determined manner will be missed.
"It's hard for me to imagine not being in consultation with Andy," said Portland's congressman. "He appreciated how the plans had to mesh with personalities and politics, resource constraints and just luck of the draw."
Hales, who continues to make "Big Nose Wine" with at Cotugno's Sellwood area home, said he knows of nobody who will be happy about Cotugno's retirement.
"I certainly can't say that about myself," Hales quipped. "It's going to be very strange to be involved in planning in the region without Andy there, giving that relatively quiet voice of thoughtfulness and calm."