Image from Shaw’s LinkedIn page.

DC mayor Muriel Bowser will appoint Salt Lake City’s former director of community and economic development, Eric Shaw, to run the DC Office of Planning, multiple sources confirmed.

Bowser has not formally announced Shaw yet, or a pick for Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development. Shaw did visit OP on Friday to introduce himself to the planning staff.

Shaw has experience with DC, having worked here as a Capital City Fellow in 2000, when Anthony Williams was mayor. The Capital City Fellows program gives bright young people a chance to rotate through a number of different DC agencies; many ultimately stay on in one of those agencies or continue to work in local issues in some way. He then worked in Miami, San Jose, California, and Louisiana before going to Utah.

When he started work in Salt Lake City in 2012, Shaw told the Salt Lake Tribune that he wanted to focus on drawing more people in the planning process, “like engaging immigrants that have been underrepresented.” Including underrepresented communities in decisions was a major focus of Bowser’s campaign. (It also was a major focus for Gray’s, but four years later, Bowser defeated Gray in those sections of the city.)

Both Shaw and the economic development director, who worked for him, both left the Salt Lake government in September under circumstances that the press was unable to discern; city officials had no negative things to say about him (at least publicly).

Correction: The original version of this article said Shaw told the Salt Lake Tribune he had left “because of a great opportunity.” However, Wilf Sommerkorn, the planning director who also left around the same time, was the one who said that. The original version also misstated Shaw’s title; he was director of community and economic development, not director of planning.

David Alpert created Greater Greater Washington in 2008 and was its executive director until 2020. He formerly worked in tech and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco Bay, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He lives with his wife and two children in Dupont Circle.