Legendary planner Tim Keane returns home to Charleston

Former Atlanta Planning Commissioner – Tim Keane – has been named in charge of Charleston’s planning, permitting and engineering. He will take office at the beginning of June.

Keane lived and worked in Charleston for 16 years before coming to Atlanta in 2015.

In a phone conversation Friday afternoon, Keane said he decided to return to Charleston for personal reasons so he could live closer to his family.

Keane left Atlanta in February 2022 to become a planning commissioner in Boise, Idaho, where he worked for two years. Then, in February, he was appointed planning commissioner for the Canadian city of Calgary. After just six weeks on the job, Keane left Calgary because he said he needed to be closer to his sons, aged 20 to 30.

“I loved the people of Calgary,” Keane said. “This is the best organization I have ever worked for. I was really sad to leave because of the quality of the city and its people, but I had to do it.

Keane has had an eventful six weeks as Calgary’s planning commissioner. The Canadian city was considering a citywide “comprehensive rezoning,” which was quite controversial because it would allow for increased density with more diverse housing types – duplexes, fourplexes and townhouses.

The proposal was already in the works when Keane arrived, but he was one of the plan’s proponents during the city council’s public hearing, which lasted 15 days with 736 speakers. After several weeks of presentations and deliberations, the city council adopted the rezoning by a vote of 9-6.

It was the longest public hearing ever held in Calgary, and a reporter from the Calgary Herald said it could have been the longest public hearing in Canadian history.

Keane said this as if returning to Charleston at that time was meant to be. As soon as he was elected Charleston’s new mayor last fall, William Cogswell began talking with Keane about joining his administration.

Both date back to when Keane was a planning commissioner working for longtime Charleston Mayor – Joe Riley. Cogswell was then a developer of historic properties and very involved in the town’s preservation circles.

“William always did challenging historic buildings,” Keane said, citing the cigar factory in historic downtown Charleston as one such project. “We have always been very close. When he was elected last fall, he contacted me. But I didn’t think I would come back to Charleston. It’s only very recently that we started talking seriously.”

Cogswell announced a new organizational structure Thursday grouping the city’s 26 departments into four main sections. Keane will oversee one of these sections which will include stormwater, planning and preservation, housing and community development as well as the engineering, permitting and building inspection divisions.

“The city of Charleston definitely needed a reset,” Keane said of the new organizational structure.

The city’s press release regarding the reorganization welcomed Keane’s return.

“For the first time in nearly 50 years, our city’s organizational chart has been updated to make us more responsive to our residents,” Cogswell said in the release. “By breaking down silos and increasing communication between departments, we can increase the efficiency and effectiveness of our incredible staff. Here at the city we aim to provide excellent service to our residents and this move helps us achieve that.

During his tenure in Atlanta, Keane pushed the boundaries of design by encouraging the city to better prepare for population growth by allowing for greater density along the city’s major commercial corridors.

Keane worked with BeltLine visionary Ryan Gravel on the Atlanta City Design project that also called for the protection of the city’s neighborhoods and natural areas. But he advocated new types of housing, accessory dwelling units, in single-family communities. The city’s design incorporated Atlanta’s civil rights history and Martin Luther King Jr.’s call for “the beloved community.”

Bem Joiner, founder of Atlanta Influences Everything, praised the vision Keane and Gravel brought to Atlanta’s planning department.

“Tim was innovative and progressive when it came to design,” Joiner said in an interview Friday. “He was trying to make Atlanta the beloved city. What I found amazing was that he took Dr. King’s ideology and superimposed it on something physical – the map, the book – coupled with Dr. King’s ideology. Tim Keane saw urban design as the answer. It’s an atmosphere.

Joiner also appreciated how Keane held developers accountable by insisting on high-quality design of new buildings.

“I’m a brand guy, and Tim Keane is a brand,” Joiner said. “I love how it takes modern design and mixes it with old and new.”

As we prepare to host the World Cup in Atlanta in 2026, Joiner hopes there is a way to incorporate Keane’s vision into how the city presents itself to domestic and international visitors.

“I’m happy to hear he’s back closer to home. But we have the World Cup and Charleston doesn’t,” Joiner said. I would love to reprint the Atlanta City Design book and give it as a gift to people. He had an enlightened vision and he left it behind. Aren’t we going to benefit from all of this? The work is there. »

Keane is now back in Charleston but continues to have ties to Atlanta. An added bonus is that he’ll be closer to his fiancée Marian Liou, who lives in Atlanta and is director of arts and culture for Smart Growth America.

“There are a lot of things I miss about Atlanta,” said Keane, who will likely spend more time here when he’s not in Charleston.

“In some ways, I feel like this is where I was meant to be,” Keane said of Charleston.

Unlike Thomas Wolfe’s book “You Can’t Go Home Again”, Keane hopes to prove that you can go home.

Related