Carolyn Fath
Natalie Erdman was initially reluctant to lead the city’s planning and economic development department.
Some in city government breathed a sigh of relief after the Common Council approved Natalie Erdman’s appointment as director of the Department of Planning and Community and Economic Development on Tuesday.
Erdman previously served on an interim basis, retaining her position as executive director of Madison’s Community Development Authority, a quasi-governmental agency.
“I think there was an immediate calming effect when Natalie was appointed interim director by the mayor,” says Ald. Mike Verveer. “When news spread that she had applied and then was appointed to the permanent position, I think morale shot up considerably.”
Some perceived management problems with Erdman’s predecessor, Steven Cover. By contrast, Erdman has already “had an extremely positive influence on staff morale, particularly in the planning division of the planning department,” says Verveer.
The departmental problems surfaced during the Feb. 5, 2013, Common Council meeting when Cover spoke in approval of a controversial development project. He specifically set aside the Downtown Plan and the work of his own planning division as well as extensive public input.
“It’s a policy document, it’s not law, and we shouldn’t treat it as such,” he told the council, in reference to the Downtown Plan. “Sometimes we’ll be challenged to look beyond the plan to decide what’s best for the city.”
“I was stunned by how he undermined his staff,” Ald. Marsha Rummel later told Isthmus. “He said the exact opposite of what his staff report said. He did not respect their work, it seemed to me.”
Erdman’s appointment pleases more than just staff. “I don’t know of anybody who’s not happy with her selection,” says Ald. Ledell Zellers, who heard concerns from city staff during Cover’s reign. “My general impression is that everybody respects her. She’s a wonderful person to work with.”
Yet the new director of one of our most powerful governmental entities is unknown to most in Madison. A player behind the scenes for more than a decade, who is Natalie Erdman?
As suggested by its unwieldy name, the Department of Planning and Community and Economic Development has broad responsibilities — and broad powers. Heading it was never Erdman’s goal, not even as of a few months ago. She always planned to return to the Community Development Authority. Her interim city responsibilities began Feb. 1, overlapping with Cover, who departed Feb. 24 to take a planning job in Arlington, Va.
“I’m a little uncomfortable being in the spotlight, being in front,” she admits.
Born Natalie Bock, Erdman was raised here but she’s from Hammond, Ind., made famous by Jean Shepherd in his short stories, radio talks and — most of all — A Christmas Story.
Her family moved to Madison in the 1970s. She graduated from Monona Grove High School in 1981. At the UW-Madison, she encountered a life-changing figure: professor James Graaskamp, internationally famous for his expertise in real estate education. The School of Business’ Center for Real Estate is named for Graaskamp.
“I was a finance major and heading toward banking,” Erdman recalls. “My father was, at the time, dean of the business school. I think he was very happy to see me thinking about going into banking. He was the one who said, ‘You should take the intro to real estate, because those real estate folks under Graaskamp seem to really be an interesting group.’”
She took the class. And then another Graaskamp class and another, “until I had a major in real estate,” she says. “He was a great person and a great teacher and a great thinker.”
For about a decade she worked in real estate lending at a number of large financial organizations in Chicago, including Citigroup and what’s now US Bank. She specialized in “troubled debt.”
“That’s about taking deals apart,” she recalls. “I was interested in doing something where we were putting deals together.”
She went to work with Heartland Properties. The subsidiary of Wisconsin Power & Light is a developer and financer of affordable housing. Here, Erdman says she learned “the tools that are used to develop affordable housing.”
Then she came back to Madison, where she worked for 13 years with the Alexander Company, a firm that specializes in urban development and historic preservation. Her portfolio as project manager include examples of adaptive reuse of historic buildings.
“I first became acquainted with Natalie when she worked with the Alexander Company, over a decade ago,” says Verveer. “Natalie was the main Alexander employee who worked on the massive Capitol West project,” which featured adaptive reuse of the former Methodist/Meriter Hospital on West Washington Avenue. “I found her to be very delightful to work with.”
In 2010 Erdman became executive director of the CDA, a redevelopment and housing authority that owns and operates apartments and administers federal rental assistance for low-income households in Madison.
Five years ago she married Dan Erdman. Like his father, the late Marshall Erdman, he’s an architect-developer. They live in a 1850s farmhouse in the Spring Harbor neighborhood.
Just a few months ago, Erdman was certain she didn’t want the city’s chief planning job. She unexpectedly came around.
“One, I liked the job as an interim more than I thought I would,” she explains. “Two, I was hopeful they would find someone really good in the first round of interviews. When it turned out that they didn’t pass any [applicants] on to the mayor, I reconsidered.”
Also, some alders and the mayor encouraged her to apply. Toward the end of June, “I changed my mind and turned in my resume in the second round,” she says. Shortly afterward, she was hired by the city.
In doing so, “we really knocked one out of the park,” says Verveer. “I can’t say enough good stuff about her.”
“Natalie Erdman is well-suited and very prepared for this leadership role in city government,” says Mayor Paul Soglin. “She has the respect of city staff, the [Common] Council, developers and neighborhood groups.”
The move from interim to permanent hasn’t been much of a change, Erdman says, except that she’s now taking a longer view by looking at “aligning resources, developing staff, developing capacity.”
She isn’t pushing a grand vision for Madison. “A lot of the vision for the city is going to come from the policymakers — from the mayor, from the council, from our very able staff who put plans together,” she says.
But she doesn’t see her department being passive, either. “I hope that in the very first stages we can make sure that we’re giving the mayor and the policymakers good information on which to make policy decisions,” she says. “And that we’re running an open and transparent process, so the other groups of people that have a stake — whether its neighborhoods or preservationists — have an opportunity to also make sure we give them good information [and] have a chance to make sure that the mayor and the council hear their side of situations.”
Erdman resists talking about her department’s past, but, when pressed about morale, says: “I hope that everybody at planning would...feel that I would support them in what they need to do and support them in their work. And I think they would.”
Erdman says she respects the city’s planning documents. “As we move developments through the process, developers should be paying careful attention to what’s in the planning documents,” she says. “Our staff should be helping developers understand what’s in the planning documents, and making sure that the development community understands the importance of those plans.”
Although the planning function of her new department gets most of the attention, she sees the work of community and economic officers interlocking.
“Those departments really overlap in certain places and, if done right, work well together in terms of building strong neighborhoods, making sure everyone in our city has economic opportunity [and] making sure we build a city that is strong and is the city of our vision.”
