Downtown renovation frustrations fuel Williams’ Winchester mayoral bid

This isn’t the first time Perry Williams has con­sid­ered being Winchester’s may­or. He’s been think­ing about it for a decade.

But when the city began its major ren­o­va­tion of Main Street last year, his frus­tra­tions and those of oth­er prop­er­ty own­ers caused him to think this is the time.

“I think when the rub­ber hits the road in this down­town project, we, groups of us, felt like we weren’t heard, and when we need­ed lead­er­ship, we didn’t have it,” he said in an interview.

Williams said he felt that some­one should have been lead­ing from the front, being open, explain­ing to busi­ness own­ers what was hap­pen­ing. And there should have been mon­ey giv­en at the start to those who were going to be adverse­ly affect­ed by demo­li­tion and reconstruction.

“We had dam­age to all four of our build­ings down here,” and so did some of his neigh­bors, Williams said. They were told their busi­ness­es wouldn’t be shut down, but they were, he not­ed. He said he was out sev­er­al thou­sand dol­lars in dam­ages, and, at the least, some­one should have said they were sorry.

The Strength Fix train­ing facil­i­ty he owns has no back entrance, so when the con­trac­tor demol­ished the side­walk in front of it, his clients had no way to get in.

“They say we’re respon­si­ble” for the side­walks, “yet you can show up and start jack­ham­mer­ing away and not even tell us you’re com­ing? Both of those things can’t be true,” he said.

Although Williams thinks the new down­town looks bet­ter, he sees mul­ti­ple prob­lems with the design.

Eliminating par­al­lel park­ing on the high side of Main Street reduced the num­ber of park­ing spaces avail­able in the heart of down­town as well as spaces for pub­lic tran­sit vans for peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties, he said.

“So you took the two biggest con­cerns, which are down­town park­ing and hand­i­capped acces­si­bil­i­ty, and you made them tougher,” he said.

Williams is also won­der­ing how he’s going to get a lift to paint his tall build­ings or a truck to make deliv­er­ies now that the par­al­lel park­ing spaces are gone and the street is too nar­row for traf­fic to get around those obstructions.

He also thinks that while the side­walks were torn up would have been a good time to do infra­struc­ture improve­ments, which will now require tear­ing them up again.

“I don’t think they put a lot of thought into it,” he said.

Williams said that two days before the Friday fil­ing dead­line, his wife, Anna Selina, asked him if he was going to run for may­or. Nobody else had filed to chal­lenge Mayor JoEllen Reed. He dis­cussed it with Selina and his old­est son, Gabe, and decid­ed to go for it.

“Winchester has been great for me,” said the chi­ro­prac­tor, busi­ness own­er, real estate investor, and for­mer foot­ball coach, who has made the town his home for near­ly 30 years. He would like to give back some­thing to the community.

It’s the right time, he said, because his chil­dren have moved out, and he’s “most­ly retired.”

Williams works half a day three days a week, and Gabe, who is also a chi­ro­prac­tor, “does most of the heavy lift­ing with the practice.”

“I have this extra time now, and I’m at that age where I’m too young to sit around and make bird­hous­es,” said Williams, who is 55.

The mayor’s office is con­sid­ered a part-time posi­tion that pays less than $15,000 a year.

Williams, a native of Indiana, grew up about an hour from Indianapolis and grad­u­at­ed from Indiana State University in Terre Haute. He earned his master’s and doc­tor­ate degrees from Palmer College of Chiropractic in Davenport, Iowa, and has done post-grad­u­ate study in exer­cise sci­ence and health and human performance.

He moved here in 1997 when he estab­lished Winchester Chiropractic, and he coached foot­ball for 20 years at Robert D. Campbell Junior High School. He got into weightlift­ing and start­ed Strength Fix while coaching.

Williams was a chi­ro­prac­tor for the 2016 Olympic Games and two years lat­er, the Paralympic Games. He also owns GSR Real Estate, which man­ages his four down­town build­ings: Mason on Main, The Venue at Whiskey & Wiles, the for­mer Berryman Law Office and Strength Fix.

He and Selina each have three children.

When Ed Burtner was may­or, Williams said he would nev­er run against him. He also told Reed he wouldn’t run against her when she suc­ceed­ed Burtner four years ago, but she led him to believe she would be a “one and done,” he said.

Reed doesn’t deny that she might have said she only want­ed to serve one term, but she’s changed her mind because she wants to fin­ish some things she helped start and believes this is an excit­ing time for Winchester.

Williams doesn’t see this as a grudge match.

“I con­sid­er her a friend,” he said.

But as a busi­ness­man, he per­ceived a lack of for­ward-think­ing lead­er­ship in regard to how the down­town project was handled.

“I thought, if this is as good as we’ve got, then I can do bet­ter,” he said.

Williams believes his back­ground qual­i­fies him to lead the city.

“I think my track record in the com­mu­ni­ty over 30 years” is impor­tant, he said.

Asked what he would like to accom­plish as may­or, Williams answered: “I would like to see us use our resources a lit­tle bit better.”

He would also want to run the city “more like a business.”

One vision he’s had is for an indoor-out­door climb­ing facil­i­ty to pro­mote fit­ness. Another is to use self-dri­ving cars for pub­lic transportation.

“I’m not a fan of data cen­ters,” he said, when asked about a con­tro­ver­sial issue in the Bluegrass region right now.

He said busi­ness mogul Elon Musk has said they belong in orbit.

“If the smartest guy in the world says they’re even­tu­al­ly all going to be in space, I would be care­ful” about “chew­ing up farm­land” for giant com­put­er cam­pus­es that use a tremen­dous amount of water and elec­tric­i­ty, he said.

Although city elec­tions are sup­posed to be non­par­ti­san, Williams is a reg­is­tered Republican run­ning against a Democrat. But he describes him­self as a lib­er­tar­i­an and pop­ulist who is for “less government.”

Williams said he wants to bring in more busi­ness­es and jobs, but would be care­ful that incen­tives such as tax breaks are used respon­si­bly. The city might tell a busi­ness that a tax incen­tive is for five years or 10 years, but “it can’t be for­ev­er,” he said.

He also ques­tions why a local gov­ern­ment would bring in fran­chis­es to com­pete against local­ly owned and oper­at­ed businesses.

“I think, when you have more dol­lar stores, more used car lots, these kinds of places, that’s an indi­ca­tion of what the town can sup­port,” he observed.

The prob­lem, he said, is that so many peo­ple in gov­ern­ment don’t under­stand busi­ness. Having pri­vate-sec­tor peo­ple, not only pub­lic admin­is­tra­tors, involved in deci­sion-mak­ing would be a good start. That’s one advan­tage he has as a can­di­date for may­or, he said.

Williams said he would like to see infra­struc­ture reg­u­la­tions to encour­age the reuse of vacant spaces.

He said that when it comes time to redesign the parts of Main Street north and south of the core sec­tion that was recent­ly com­plet­ed, city offi­cials should ask them­selves: What did we learn?

“It’s about see­ing what’s going to hap­pen and man­ag­ing it” before­hand, he said.

Asked about pre­serv­ing agri­cul­ture and farm­land, Williams indi­cat­ed that as long as landown­ers aren’t vio­lat­ing any plan­ning and zon­ing reg­u­la­tions or oth­er laws, they should be able to devel­op their farms.

Williams sees the leg­isla­tive role of a may­or, who is a vot­ing mem­ber of the city com­mis­sion, to be not just a del­e­gate or a rep­re­sen­ta­tive, but both.

“It’s my job to vote the way they want me to vote, because I’m sup­posed to,” he said. “Now, if I know some­thing they don’t, then it’s my job to con­vince them or edu­cate them.”

Helping peo­ple under­stand some­thing is eas­i­er than fight­ing them over it, he said.