The first commissioner for Major League Soccer has a new goal in his sites. Sarasota officials announced Doug Logan was hired as director of Special Initiatives on Chronic Homelessness. A resident of the Sarasota area since 1987, the retired sports executive said he looks forward to devoting his skills and energy toward improving the lives of others. “I have lived here and have witnessed the great debate for going on 28 years,” he said. “There has been a lot of talk and a lot of plans. I’m not here to create another plan or continue a dialogue. I’m here to put my shoulder behind the wheel and try and get something accomplished.”

The city earlier this year approved an eight-point plan proposed by City Manager Tom Barwin largely perceived as an alternative to a plan crafted by consultant Robert Marbut. The Marbut plan resulted from a joint effort by city and county officials to craft a solution to the long-time homelessness issues in the community, but a proposal within the Marbut plan for a come-as-you-are shelter in the city led to a public schism between city and county leaders. While Logan also showed little taste for a shelter (“I’m not a believer in taking pain and focusing it in one location”), he also suggested divisions between the county and city approaches to this problem were overblown. “A lot more unifies us than separates us, and the stuff that seems to separate us is at the edges,” he said.

Logan will take a leave of absence from a long-time teaching role at New York University to tackle the job with the city. In addition to running MLS from 1995 to 1999, Logan also founded the sports consulting firm Empresario. He later served as CEO of USA Track and Field from 2009 until 2010, but had a public falling out with that group. “I hope I’m not deluding anyone into thinking I left nothing but friends behind,” he said. With USA Track, his goal was to restructure the organization and help generate funding; he was terminated in 2010 and said the institutional problems there remain. But from his other work, he also has experiences he hopes will transfer well here. He notes that when he took over MLS, he reserved a spot on administration staff for a welfare mother, and one of his early hires rose to become office manager and continues the hiring practice to this day. He hopes that small-scale practice at empowering people prepared him for success in this public service mission. 

“My life has been blessed in many ways,” he said. “But I have always been observant and curious enough about seeing the stark and jarring contrasts of those significantly less fortunate, those who seemingly want for things I consider to be a necessity of the human condition… I’ve still got a relatively sharp mind and some passion, and I might be able to devote it to something completely different where I am needed.”