The Rusty Rose standard was always to find a win-win

With the death of Dallas financier Rusty Rose, Arlington has lost a good friend.

Still, many in Arlington who read that statement will wonder who he was.

His name doesn’t appear among the well-known in the city’s story because he preferred a place beyond the spotlight — even as that spotlight burned as brightly as ever, while Arlington’s future as a major-league city was being decided.

When George W. Bush was assembling a group of investors who would become the owners of the Texas Rangers Baseball Club in 1989, Fort Worth’s Richard Rainwater told him he should get acquainted with Rusty.

At Rusty’s memorial service a few days ago, the former president described their first meeting. It would mark not only the beginning of a business relationship but also a strong friendship that brought together a great baseball fan and someone who had never been to a major-league ballpark.

The role that Rusty would play in the ownership group was what former Rangers President Tom Schieffer described as master analyst in the world of economic opportunity.

My experience with Rusty came into full focus the day he and Bush accepted a long-standing invitation to spend some time with city representatives to see what Arlington could do about the team’s need for a new ballpark.

It happened amid monthslong media speculation that the Rangers would be moving to Dallas, where a deal was most likely to be made to build a home for the team.

With a group of consultants in all aspects of financing and building a ballpark, we had assembled a plan to dispel that notion and demonstrate that Arlington did indeed have the capacity of ensuring the Rangers’ future in the place they belonged.

Rusty had agreed to attend the all-day meeting but said he could remain for a only a couple of hours because his calendar was full.

Midway through the morning session, he called his office and canceled the rest of his schedule and explained to me, “I want to see all of this.”

At the end of the day and realizing how vital the Rangers were to Arlington, he assured me that the team would “do the right thing.”

“We’re looking for a win-win outcome,” he continued. “There is no such thing as a good deal without that result.”

In the weeks that followed, Bush and Rusty would ask Schieffer to take on the task of building the team’s new ballpark. In our first meeting, Tom would echo Rusty’s words as the guiding principle for our negotiations.

Final approval of whatever deal was crafted would rest in the hands of the people of Arlington.

During the campaign to win that approval, in front of audiences throughout the city, it was always one of the greatest strengths of the proposed public-private partnership that we were able to stand alongside people of integrity and explain what we were trying to do.

The result is history. Voters in record numbers confirmed the attractiveness of the way the deal was structured. Later, other cities would seek our advice to guide their approach to crafting such a partnership.

The standard was set that day when Rusty Rose described the owners’ approach to the negotiations, which then followed under Schieffer’s leadership.

While he never sought a high public profile, Rusty’s role looms large in a city among the few privileged to host the national game.

He was, and will remain in Arlington’s history, a friend indeed.

Richard Greene is a former Arlington mayor and served as an appointee of President George W. Bush as regional administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency.

This story was originally published February 5, 2016 at 5:54 PM with the headline "The Rusty Rose standard was always to find a win-win."