[media-credit name=’YANA PASKOVA/Herald Photo’ align=’alignnone’ width=’648′][/media-credit]This is the first of a series profiling influential city leaders in Madison.

As a young boy growing up in Washington, D.C., Ald. Mike Verveer, District 4, never thought he would be the type of person to hold a public office.

After 10 solid years as a city alder, Verveer has been an influential force in the changes that have taken place within his downtown Madison district.

"I've always had this interest for working on political campaigns since I was a little kid," he said. "But I never thought, though, that I had the personality or interest to run for a political office."

As a city alder, Verveer mediates relations between the city and the constituents within his district.

"The city government is the level of government closest to the people when you can make an immediate difference in someone's life right away," he added.

Ald. Robbie Webber, District 5, sits next to Verveer during council meetings and praised his work ethic.

"He's very good at bringing different communities together," she said. "He works on city issues because he genuinely cares about them."

Verveer said the issue he has worked on throughout his entire tenure in office is the development and revitalization of the downtown area.

As most of the downtown area falls in his district, Verveer plays a key role in the planning of many project developments, and witnessed the construction and completion of downtown staples such as the Overture Center and the Kohl Center.

"Any project that requires city-level approval, I've been involved in," he said. "Literally billions of dollars in construction have been invested in the downtown."

The hardest part of the process, Verveer said, is getting neighborhood input on upcoming construction projects, because most of the district is comprised of short-term residents.

Webber said a constantly changing district has created daily challenges for Verveer, who has handled them well.

"A lot of people have a lot of varying views about what the city should look like," she said. "He has to juggle all those different perspectives … he is very good at bringing different communities together."

Demanding neighborhood meetings and working to get neighborhood influence results in a better product, Verveer said.

"I'm really trying to manage the downtown's revitalization and not allowing speculation to run rampant and letting anyone build what they want to build," he added.

Over the last decade, Verveer has seen a change in the downtown demographics, as many long-term residents have chosen to live in the area due to an improvement in the quality of life and the recent construction boom of high-end condominiums in recent years.

The change spurred a significant population increase in the district, as Verveer said the district was the only core district to change in the redistricting process.

Such immediate growth posed challenges for Verveer, who says he must manage population growth when the revitalization has "showed no sign" of slowing down in the future.

"I don't want the cost of living downtown to become so expensive that students can't live

here and people on fixed incomes can't live here," he said. "There's no way that I want the downtown to become an oasis for wealthy people."

Verveer remarked the diversity of the downtown area is a key reason why he loves his district, as he gets to meet a new wave of incoming students every year.

"As soon as I make a lot of friends among the student body, I lose them because they graduate or they move," he said. "It's certainly a bit of a challenge, but I think it's fun and cool to meet all these new people."

Certainly, meeting hundreds of new students every year was never a primary goal for a kid from the nation's capital.

But Verveer can count on doing so as he works around the clock to make downtown Madison the energized area it is today.