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Charlie Rivenbark announced earlier this year that he would not run for a seventh term, hanging up his hat after 24 years in office.
A Vietnam veteran and businessman, Rivenbark was first elected in 1993 and reelected in 1997. He left office in 2001, and spent the better part of a decade working for the Azalea Festival, among other things, but returned to politics in 2009 and won reelection three consecutive times, in 2013, 2017, and 2021.
Rivenbark is notoriously outspoken — it was a rare meeting when I didn’t know how he felt about a particular issue — and could be blunt at times, but also diplomatic when necessary. He’s become known for colorful turns of phrase; outgoing Republican Councilman Luke Waddell dubbed them “Charlie-isms.”
He was a relatively straight shooter with the media, as well. Early in my career, I dogged Rivenbark on a number of stories where his professional real estate career intersected with the public business of city council, and we had one or two terse exchanges — but he was never uncivil, and always returned my call or email.
He’s had no shortage of critics, myself included, but his political success — first as a Democrat and later as a Republican — shows there was something about him that resonated with people. I suppose you could chalk that up to name recognition. (Rivenbark himself told me, “I got elected. I just got lucky. I just been around and people kind of got used to it.”) But I think there was something about the way he tried to abide by his own set of principles that many people, and voters, respected – even when that meant he had to tack against the prevailing socio-political winds.
“He’s stubborn as a mule when he sticks to his guns,” a former city staffer told me. Perhaps as the essayist Susan Orlean once suggested, it’s because mules inherently know they’re the last of their kind, and for that reason are ill-inclined to take shit from anyone.
Over the last three or four years, I’ve put more effort as a journalist into sitting down with our local officials to get to know them better, to understand the personalities behind the politics. Unfortunately, I would say, I never got around to grabbing a coffee or a drink with Rivenbark. So, when I learned that he wasn’t running again, I made a note on my calendar for early December: Exit interview, Charlie Rivenbark. I thought, hell, the man was first elected when I was still in elementary school, it seems like a lot of institutional knowledge — and a lot of history — to just brush into the dustpile.
A few weeks ago, I sent him an email, and he agreed right away. We met on the penthouse floor of the Skyline Center — that’s the new city hall — where he’d done a number of other interviews (I wasn’t the only one interested in his nearly quarter-century in office, obviously). We sat in the office that, until recently, he’d shared with Councilwoman Salette Andrews, talking for about an hour and a half.
We took some tangents here and there, and maybe used some saltier language in a few off-the-record detours, but on the whole, Rivenbark was happy to lay it all: how he got into politics, how the partisan world seemed to change around him, the big wins and dark days, and how he feels about walking away.
Getting Into Politics
After serving his country as a U.S. Army Sergeant with the 196th Light Infantry Brigade in Vietnam, Rivenbark worked a host of jobs, including real estate and selling used cars. He eventually found his way into restaurants.
Rivenbark told me it started with a call from developer Bobby Harrelson. Rivenbark had been leasing out a restaurant spot for Harrelson, but it was empty at the moment. On a cold Thanksgiving afternoon, Rivenbark met Harreslon, sitting in a truck in front of the furnished but unleased restaurant on South College Road. Rivenbark said he wasn’t sure if he was going to get chewed out because he hadn’t gotten a tenant, or whether maybe Harrelson might offer him a job — but it was neither.
Rivenbark said Harrelson told him, “Son, I believe if you put your name on that sign up there and you served a decent plate of food, I think you'd do well.” He apparently believed it pretty strongly, because he went on to loan Rivenbark the money to get going.
Though Rivenbark would eventually end up the managing partner of the sixteen-location Annabelle’s chain (a deal where he lost his shirt), his real passion was his eponymous restaurant, which he ran with his brother, Bill.
“It’s a tough business — you know, if the dishwasher doesn’t show up, Charlie had to wash dishes all day,” Rivenbark said. “But it was enjoyable. Met a lot of wonderful people. That's what I was doing when I got into politics in the first place. I was at my restaurant, and it was a great base.”
The Charlie Rivenbark’s restaurant didn’t exactly print money, but it did well, and was a hub of political and community discussion and gossip, and gave him an ear to the ground on local issues. One night, in the early 1990s, the New Hanover County school board abruptly shifted all the principals to new campuses, bumping one older principal from his office at New Hanover High School, where he’d hoped to retire.
“It pissed a lot of people off,” Rivenbark said. His restaurant was buzzing about it, so when upset community members held a meeting at Temple Baptist Church, Rivenbark went. It was standing-room only, and tempers ran high; when they asked for volunteers to approach school board members, Rivenbark volunteered.
Rivenbark made an appointment with one of the board members. He put on a suit, drove out to the board member's office, and arrived fifteen minutes early. Hours later, the board member came out of his office. Rivenbark introduced himself, but the board member dismissed him.
“He said, ‘I hadn't got time for you today.’ And it pissed me off that he could do that. He’d cooled my heels out there in the lobby for two and a half hours, and then told me that,” Rivenbark said.
The incident lit a bit of a fire under him, and not long afterward, he got involved with a budget review committee for the City of Wilmington.
“I was the weak link in that damn chain,” Rivenbark admitted. “There were some real sharp people on that ad hoc committee, and we made a report to the city about eight months later, and the city adopted about 70% [of the recommendations].”
The city, which was suffering from administrative bloat and stuck in the economic doldrums, did a reduction-in-force and turned things around, Rivenbark said.
Not long afterward, he was approached and asked to run in the 1993 election.
“You gotta watch out for your ego when people start telling you how good they think you are. I told them I’m just a broken-down restaurant guy, I sold used cars and furniture,” he said. “I met with some of them, and I said, ‘Look, you know, I don't have a college education.’ And they said, ‘That doesn't matter. You got common sense.’ And I said, ‘Well, I think I do.’ And so I ran, and was top vote getter, by the way.”
Rivenbark has spoken many times about finding his way in the wilderness during his first two terms, struggling to understand the deeper and more complex operations of the city. But a decade later, he’d take future mayor Bill Saffo under his wing.
Rivenbark didn’t know Bill, but he was friends with his father, Avgerinos “Doky” Saffo, and attended his grandmother’s funeral. There, he saw Bill Saffo speak.
“They were doing the eulogies and Bill stands up and he just just kind had that gift, you know, just flowing. And it's probably two or three weeks after that, we were out, me and Doky used to hang out and drink a little liquor and shoot the breeze, and I said, ‘man, I enjoyed hearing [your son] talk.’ I said, ‘he ought to get into politics,’” Rivenbark said.
Rivenbark had just rolled off council in 2001 but was willing to share what he’d learned in his first two terms.
“We met at K&W Cafeteria one morning for breakfast, and he walks in, and he's got a legal pad with questions all the way down and onto the next page. We ended up eating lunch there, too. That's how long we were there. And I told him, ‘if you sign up and run, I bet you'd be top vote-getter, and he was, and that's how he got in,” Rivenbark said.
It was the beginning of a long friendship and, in 2009 when Rivenbark won reelection to council, a decade and a half of partnership leading Wilmington. Despite occasional policy and ideological differences, the two have remained close. Rivenbark became a Republican prior to his 2021 campaign and bowed out this year to make room for Republican Richard Collier, a longtime planning commission member. But in announcing he would not run again, Rivenbark gave Saffo — a lifelong Democrat — his full-throated endorsement.
Earlier this week, when Saffo gave farewell remarks to outgoing council members, he thanked Rivenbark for his advice and public service, adding, “Charlie, we love you. Godspeed.”
The Elephant in the Room
While it’s technically nonpartisan, these days there’s no mistaking the party dynamics on city council, and it’s no secret that Rivenbark is a Republican. But that wasn’t the case in 1993.
“That was the beauty of counsel — non-partisan. I didn't have a clue who was what,” Rivenbark said.
He’d been a Democrat all his life, since he registered while serving in the Army.
“I turned 21 in Vietnam, and it was the first of the month. And very rarely did we get paid, but the XO came out in a helicopter, and he set up his little TV tray in a damn bottom of a 1000-pound bomb crater, and he said, 'Sergeant Rivenbark, you're eligible to vote. You want to register?' I said, ‘You’re damn right I do.’ He said, ‘What's your party affiliation?’ I said, ‘I'm a Democrat.’ And so I signed up, and that was in 1969, and since then I’d just been a Democrat,” he said.
It was, admittedly, a rather different Democratic Party in the 1970s and 1980s.
“We had a Republican party in name. But every conservative businessman in this town, they were all Democrats, they were Dixiecrats. There was no Republican Party,” Rivenbark said, recalling that meetings of the local GOP would sometimes bring just a handful of people.
In the lead-up to the 1997 election, while Rivenbark was running for his second term, he said he was approached by local conservatives, including Woody White and Parks Griffin.
“All good Republicans. I mean, good smart businessmen. They asked me to come over to their office one day, and I had no idea what they wanted — They wanted me to change parties,” Rivenbark said. “And I said, ‘Why would I do that? You know, I'm elected. I'd just piss off 50% of the voters. I said, 'You know how I vote [on council], why is it important whether I've got an R or D after my name?’”
Rivenbark turned them down, and after a drink of whiskey and a handshake, left their office and didn’t think about it again for years.
Flash forward over two decades, though, and Rivenbark was increasingly frustrated at being associated with the national-level politics of the Democratic Party.
“I got tired — there's so many new people here that didn't know me, they don't know what I'm made of. They would say, ‘Oh, you're a Democrat. I can't vote for a Democrat.’ Before I could even talk to somebody about being elected, I had to go through and explain why that is not the case with me,” he told me.
One day, he was driving by the Board of Elections office and decided to change his affiliation to Republican prior to the 2021 election. While he faced accusations of being a “Trojan Horse” from right-wing members of the party, Rivenbark largely convinced the local GOP that his conservative bona fides were legitimate.
I asked Rivenbark if there are times now, under the Trump administration, when he’s unhappy being associated with Republican policies.
He said he was largely supportive of Trump’s agenda compared to his criticisms of the Biden administration, specifically abortion and immigration.
While there have been criticisms about civil rights violations and the lack of transparency around ICE and border patrol operations in recent months, Rivenbark said he supported a tougher approach to immigration.
“I mean, there's people in this country that could put an army together. There's some bad people that have come into this country. And I don't have a problem with ICE doing what they're doing. If you pull up a damn truck, it's got ICE on the side of it, and the people that run, they're running for a reason. You know, if you came in, if you got a visa, or you got here legally, you know you don't need to be scared,” he said.
But Rivenbark did have some criticism of Trump, namely his lack of humility.
“That guy's ego is bigger than this building [i.e., the Skyline Center]. I just wish sometimes, and I don't think I'm any different than anybody, I wish there would be some time where he could show us a little bit of humble, you know, and not drop the hammer down on somebody that doesn't agree with him. That's the part I disagree with Trump about,” he said.
Rivenbark is comfortable being a Republican, but he told me he doesn’t feel much different. He still sees many things the same way he has for years — and he remains wary of fringe politics, on both wings of the party.
“You take the damn far left and the far right, you put them together, and I promise you, you can't pick out who's who, because they’re all crazy,” he said.
A Very Long Epidemic
During Rivenbark’s decades in office, the issue of homelessness has persisted, and in the estimation of many, gotten worse. Rivenbark has a long history with the problem, having spent years volunteering at shelters.
“We didn't have enough beds, probably in those days, but we came damn close. We got people off the street at night. But as far as permanent housing, if this ain't an epidemic, there ain't a cow in Texas,” Rivenbark said.
Rivenbark shares a belief held by many, especially law enforcement officers who interact with homeless people, that the millions of dollars in resources provided in Wilmington are actually attracting more people to the region.
“It's a magnet, and it's almost like insanity,” Rivenbark told me. “It's not that if we stop doing that, they're going to disappear or the problem goes away. But, I mean, you don't see it in Myrtle Beach. You don't see it in Jacksonville. And we make a point to know this is where they're coming. We got the resources, and this is where they come.”
While data from local service providers and the Continuum of Care (the local government agency tasked with overseeing programs for the unhoused), indicate the majority of homeless people are from here, some argue the data is likely incomplete. One example Rivenbark has raised repeatedly is the Point in Time count, which is performed in the winter. Rivenbark noted that, in his decades of experience, including time on the Council of Governments (which oversees the Continuum), many people hunker down in the winter weather, using whatever resources they have to get out of the cold. A more accurate count, he argues, could be done in the summer.
“I was on [the Council of Governments] for a load of years. I'm gonna tell you that count that they do, that'd be like standing up here [on the Skyline Center penthouse floor] trying to count ants down there on that pavilion. I've done it year after year after year, and it's not accurate. I tried to get them to start doing it in July," he said.
Rivenbark asked me what I would do. I said, personally, I’d be willing to spend more taxpayer money — though I know not everyone feels the same way — and focus on adding shelter beds. He asked where I’d put those shelter beds. I joked I’d pick their neighborhood where I got the fewest votes. He laughed and asked if he could quote me on that. We agreed that, wherever the city looks to put a new shelter, “there will be people raising hell,” as Rivenbark put it.
He recalled the process for rezoning land to make way for The Healing Place, a shelter and treatment facility that sparked public pushback.
“You’d thought we were getting ready to put a toxic waste dump over there,” he said.
The homeless problem, for Rivenbark, remains infuriatingly intractable.
“I don't know, it's like having an itch that you can't scratch — it just, I don't know, what do you do? And believe me, we sit down and listen to the people at the public input portion, and they say the same thing, you just said, we need more [shelter beds]. We don't disagree with that. You know, we spend money on it. And the county, my God, they do too,” Rivenbark said.
Rivenbark said he wishes his successors the best of luck, but anyone who’s been in town for more than a minute knows it will be a tough row to hoe.
Development and Its Discontents
If there’s an issue that’s persisted almost as long as the homelessness epidemic, and for which public officials take nearly the same level of flak, it’s development.
I hear all the time from people who feel like the Wilmington they knew and love is “ruined.” You can sympathize, I think, with folks who feel like there’s been a bait and switch: they moved here for a certain kind of relaxed coastal lifestyle, but the region has been steadily transforming into something more modern and urban. On the other hand, there’s a bit of hypocrisy baked into that. Few politicians would say it out loud, but almost everyone complaining about Wilmington’s growth moved here from somewhere else as part of that development.
“They’re the problem,” Rivenbark said. “I don’t tell them that, but you should have been in the 40s, or the 50s, or the 60s.”
As a fifth-generation Wilmingtonian, a commercial real estate guy, and a city council member, Rivenbark’s seen the issue from several different perspectives.
He recalls the 1950s, with no zoning ordinances, and relatively unregulated suburban sprawl spreading out from the 1945 corporate limits. As the city started annexing land, low-density residential was “in vogue,” as Rivenbark put it. With the exception of a few community business corridors, like Oleander Drive, and other commercial corridors like Market or College, it was single-family homes as far as the eye could see.
But the market has shifted. Rivenbark pointed to the Riverlights development on River Road, initially planned to be thousands of single-family homes.
“Then, in 2008, the damn economy went to hell in a handbasket,” Rivenbark said. “In 2012, the economic resurfaced, they said, ‘nobody wants that anymore.’ People want apartment homes. They want amenities; they want someone to mow that grass. That’s the new culture.”
Rivenbark noted that the city has tried to require design elements, like interior parking and heavy landscaping, that make apartment complexes more attractive, but he understands the complaints.
“I used to hold my nose sometimes and vote to do those – but it was what the damn people want,” he said. “I'm an old timer here, too. Do I like the way it looks? Not that damn much. But that's what comes with change. This is a new day in Wilmington. It's not like the old days … You can’t get toothpaste back in the tube.”
There’s no question that Wilmington has enjoyed an explosion of economic growth since the stagnation of the early 1990s. Not everyone has enjoyed that equally, but on the whole, most officials have touted Wilmington’s impressive growth as a positive.
But that doesn’t mean the public is enamored of the development and real estate businesses. In fact, these days, you can get a bad name in populist politics just for being tangentially associated with real estate. But as someone working in commercial real estate, Rivenbark has been specifically criticized by many — including me, from time to time — for the appearance of or potential for conflicts of interest.
Part of this has to do with the organizational structure of some of the firms he’s worked for, most recently Cape Fear Commercial. Under North Carolina law, council members have a duty to vote, and rely on city attorneys to advise them whether they can or should recuse themselves. Because he’s considered an independent contractor, often city legal staff have told him he has to vote, even though it’s his firm that’s lobbying for a rezoning or other city action.
I also wrote, on several occasions, about Rivenbark’s relationship with developer Jeff Kentner, who has several major projects around town, including apartment homes near Target and Mayfaire, and the long-delayed attempt to redevelop the Galleria mall site on Wrightsville Avenue near the bridge to the beach. Kentner gave $13,000 to Rivenbark’s 2017 reelection campaign, using family and friends to get around the donation limits in place at the time. Subsequently, Kentner called on Rivenbark to help him in disputes with the city.
With many years of water under the bridge, I asked Rivenbark: did Kentner ever try to leverage his donations to get a favorable vote?
“Hell, he never got anything,” Rivenbark said. While he thought the Galleria project was a good one on the merits, it never came to fruition as Kentner envisioned it, because that would have required a massively expensive overhaul of a portion of Wrightsville Avenue into a complete street with buried utilities and other costly features. Despite years of persistent lobbying at the state and local level, Kentner was never able to get the ball over the line (although he did recoup his investment and then some when he sold the land).
Rivenbark added that even during his first campaign, he faced allegations of “being in bed with” real estate — since it was not long after Harrelson had loaned him the money to open his restaurant.
He acknowledged people might see donations in a certain quid-pro-quo way, but he was adamant that he’d never been called to ‘return the favor,’ as it were.
“Ben, sometimes when you go and ask people for money and they give you money, you wonder if they're expecting something,” Rivenbark said. “But, after 24 years, I have yet to have anybody ever tell me or ask me if you could do this or do that — because first thing I’d do, I'd call whoever was the chief of police, and I'd tell them was this guy was trying to bribe me. I would never tolerate that. I wouldn't care who it was. That's just wrong. And I've never had that happen, and I don't think I've ever served with anybody who would do something like that.”
Tense Times on the Council
At the end of Rivenbark’s penultimate term in 2020 and 2021, the city was going through a tumultuous time. Covid was rampant, and the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin launched the country into spasms of protest and debate over racial inequality.
In Wilmington, arguments raged over a proposed display of the words “Black Lives Matter” near the north end of Third Street, and about the two Confederate statues in the heart of downtown.
The statues were erected in 1909 and 1922, at the height of Jim Crow rather than in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War. Scholars argued they were put up as part of the revisionist history Lost Cause movement, and also to intimidate Black activists and voters. I heard one critic who likened it to Germans hypothetically erecting a monument to Wehrmacht soldiers in 2002 — over a half century after the end of WWII. The monuments had attracted graffiti in the past — including a swastika and the initials “BLM” — but antagonism increased during the summer of 2020. I remember hearing protestors chant, “fuck them statues,” leaving no doubt about how they felt.
Others, including Rivenbark, argued that the statues should stay up as an important part of Wilmington’s history.
As tensions grew, the city furtively took down the statues in the middle of the night and hid them at an undisclosed storage facility, citing public safety.
Looking back at that incident, Rivenbark called it a “dark day.”
“Well, I looked at [then police chief] Donny Williams, and I said, ‘Donny, can we keep these things from coming down?’ He says, ‘I can't do that.’ And I did not want to see some jerk lasso any of those statues and drag them down Third Street. I didn't, and that's what would have happened. We put them out at the damn operation center, wrapped in some kind of rubberized fabric on a trash pile, where we put scrap concrete. That's where they were. Total disrespect,” Rivenbark said.
Rivenbark would go on to be the sole vote against a deal to permanently remove the statues and give them to the Daughters of the Confederacy.
“Not just no, but hell no,” Rivenbark said at the time. He protested not only the somewhat underhanded move of voting during an agenda briefing instead of a regular council meeting, but also the city’s capitulation to “mob rule,” as he saw it.
Defending the statues as important historical artifacts was a contentious position, and it put him in some unsavory company.
Some people felt the statues should remain downtown, often suggesting they get signage to provide historical context about when and why they were erected in the first place — a reasonable position, I thought at the time, which drew parallels to memorials and artifacts from other periods of violence or injustice.
But others were less concerned with historical preservation or accuracy, and instead celebrated the ahistorical fantasy of the noble Confederate soldier (claiming they fought for their neighbors, not for the institution of slavery). And some nakedly celebrated the vision of White supremacy represented by the Confederacy and the Jim Crow era, during which the statues — like many similar ones around the South — were put up in prominent places.
Rivenbark’s stance on the statues was complicated by his objections to the proposed “Black Lives Matter” sign, part of a wave of similar declarations painted on public spaces like college campuses, roadways, and government buildings.
While some moderates on council stuck to comparatively modest objections about the slippery slope of government speech, Rivenbark was more direct.
“Black Lives Matter, I think that’s the most racist comment I’ve ever heard. I said, ‘all lives matter,’” Rivenbark told me, echoing comments he made back in 2020.
Rivenbark told me then, and has said as much since, that he’s avowedly against racism. And he said he understood the Black community’s outcry.
“And I mean, the George Floyd thing, that changed a lot of stuff, and it shouldn't have. I mean, did I agree with that? Hell no, I wish that cop, I hope he never sees the light of day. That was wrong on so many levels,” Rivenbark told me.
He also said that, privately, he got some support from the Black community, though he wasn’t going to make that public at the time.
“Believe it or not, and I would have never sat down there on council or spoke to anybody like you [i.e. a reporter] when it happened, but I knew a lot of people in the Black community, too. I mean, I just do and they're good friends of mine, not token Black friends, but they're friends of mine. And I had a lot of people call me and say, ‘You stick to your guns on that,’ because they thought it was a little bit crazy too. The Black Lives Matter, painting all over our streets, ‘don't let that happen,’” Rivenbark told me.
But in 2020, as an older White southern man, defending Confederate statues and objecting to a BLM mural, he certainly gave his critics ample ammunition. It was, at the time, not uncommon to hear Rivenbark’s name cursed by protestors. I once saw a crude effigy on a protest sign. You can probably guess what the lettering said.
His stance also caused him to butt heads with Democratic Councilman Kevin Spears, who along with fellow Black council member Clifford Barnett, Sr., spoke passionately in favor of the BLM mural as a positive, even necessary, restorative step the city could and should take for the Black community.
Looking back, Rivenbark said he can see both sides of the issue.
“[Spears] took great exception to that, and I can get it. It's like, we put a ball right there on that table, and the side you're looking at, it's white, the side I'm looking at, it's black. And we could argue all day long, the damn ball is black, man, and you were sitting there saying the same thing about it being white, but until you turn it around, we're always going to have that disagreement,” he said.
The sign eventually went up, with the added word “do” — as in, “Black Lives Do Matter” — in an attempt to distance it from the political activist group of the same name. It was later relocated to McCrae Street, near the D.C. Virgo school and the Boys & Girls Clubs facility.
“I guess we got past that, the sign is still over here on McCrae — and I get it, that presents a lot of pride for the Black community,” Rivenbark said.
The debates over the statues and the BLM sign left Rivenbark and Spears at odds. Rivenbark said he feels Spears “never misses an opportunity to throw a dart at me.”
Still, Rivenbark said he likes and respects Spears.
“He’s smart, he’s got a college education and he’s getting a master’s degree,” Rivenbark said, adding that he’s been impressed at the campaigns that got Spears elected in 2019 and reelected in 2023. “When I get up for the last time [on council], I'm gonna walk down and I'm gonna shake his hand.”
Few regrets
I asked Rivenbark, if he had run for and won another term, what would have been on his docket to accomplish? But he told me, by and large, that he felt the city was in a great spot.
Gesturing around to the top floor of the Skyline Center, Rivenbark spread his arms.
“Well, this building that we're sitting in, Ben, I mean, this is big potatoes,” he said.
Rivenbark recounted that, for years, he’d sat on an ad hoc facilities committee that was endlessly kicking around plans to demolish and rebuild the city building at 305 Chestnut Street. Staff and council agreed on the need, but the final plans never seemed to come together.
“It was like a committee trying to design a horse,” Rivenbark said.
And then there was the price tag: around $100 million.
Then, one day at his Cape Fear Commercial office, Rivenbark was at the copier when he ran into his co-worker Paul Loukas, who was serving as the “boots-on-ground guy” for the larger national firm that was working to sell Thermo Fisher’s 12-story downtown building. Rivenbark learned that, for tax reasons, Thermo Fisher was hoping to unload the building by the end of the fiscal year, and would take $68 million for it. That wasn’t quite a fire sale, but it was tens of millions less than what the building was appraised for.
Rivenbark told me he started printing copies of the sales packet and distributing them at meetings every chance he got — but no one bit.
“So one night, there was some boring presentation being made to us, and I leaned over to Bill, and I said, ‘Bill, we’re gonna lose this.’ I said, ‘This is gonna go away. And once it's gone, it's gone.’ Bill looked at me, and he says, ‘Damn it, we want to buy all of it.’ I'm not telling you pillow talk. I mean, this is what happened,” Rivenbark told me.
The project got put on “warp speed,” Rivenbark said.
There was plenty of public pushback, including criticism of the city’s desire to take the penthouse floor from fellow Republican Luke Waddell. But Rivenbark said compared to what the city would have spent on new office space and parking, it was the deal of a lifetime. And he feels that having leased out almost all of the space in the massive 371,000-square-foot building, he’s proved the doubters wrong.
“People looked at us like we had lost our minds,” Rivenbark said. “This was the smartest damn deal the city has ever made.”
So, in general, Rivenbark had few regrets.
One exception, though, was his 2022 DUI charge.
“You know that that was terribly embarrassing to me and to the council. There were some extenuating circumstances to that, but it doesn't matter,” Rivenbark said, agreeing that it was a sobering experience in more ways than one.
“I paid dearly for it. My insurance is higher in the ceiling,” he said.
Other than that, Rivenbark said he felt “a little remorse” after deciding not to run.
“Sometimes I feel like I let the city down, by not running. Of course, I'd have probably got my ass handed to me on this one,” Rivenbark said, alluding to the potent Blue wave that carried Democratic candidates in local races around the country. He also said he was “terribly disappointed” that his fellow Republicans, Luke Waddell and Richard Collier, didn’t prevail.
Rivenbark said his favorite part of being in office has been helping people. Over the years, I’ve read a lot of emails to public officials, and I can say, when you write to your elected representative, it can be hit or miss. But with Rivenbark, I read countless responses to fans, critics, and above all, people looking for assistance with the kind of mundane bureaucratic stuff that never makes headlines: a disputed tree on a property line, a problem with a work permit, a question about water and sewer. Whatever else I might disagree with him about, I absolutely commend him on that — and I told him so.
“Those things, that's the meat of being in office,” Rivenbark said. “You know, you try to set them at ease a little bit, but those phone calls and the emails that you get, those are the ones where you can really help people. You listen to them and, if you can, help them, and if you can't, point them in another direction, where they can get some help. I love doing that,” Rivenbark said, adding that he’ll probably keep doing that.
“I'll probably still continue to get some of those calls, that's fine with me. You know, there's an old saying that a new broom sweeps well, but an old broom knows where all the corners are, and I know where all the corners are. So I can point them in the right direction or make a phone call,” he said.
Democracy Works
Rivenbark is bullish on the future of Wilmington. He’s enthusiastic about Becky Hawke, the new city manager, and Ryan Zuidema, the new police chief, offering a classic Charlie-ism for the latter.
“He's the heat, buddy. He could walk into a room full of hyenas and have them all saluting in 10 minutes. He's got that aura about him that is just calming. And the damn policemen love him,” he said.
And, ideological differences included, Rivenbark has no concerns about the three newly elected council members — J.C. Lyle, Cassidy Santaguida, and Chakema Clinton-Quintana — and the all-Democratic, majority-female board that’s now steering the city.
“You know what, I trust the people that are behind me. Those coming on, it'll take a little while to get their sea legs about them,” Rivenbark said, but noted that if they can learn lessons from staff, they’ll be ok.
Rivenbark described leaving city hall as leaving a childhood home. For him, it’s a bittersweet changing of the guard. Still, he told me “my life is full,” and he’s confident the city he loves is going to be just fine under new management.
On Tuesday, Rivenbark made his final remarks as a city council member. He said, “There's this new crowd. They're going to do just fine. Democracy works, and the voters voted, and this is what we've got, and we're going to do just fine.”
