"He's been an extremely important bridge getting those two groups (business and environmental groups) to actively talk eye-to-eye and come up with some compromise solutions in general," says Phil Capron, senior managing director of Kennedy-Wilson Inc.'s Austin office. "He's been different (from previous mayors) in that. He wasn't one camp's candidate or another camp's candidate."

While those projects had broad-based support, it was Watson who pushed and drove them, Armbrust says. "He has a lot of drive and kind of pushes people along," he says. "He knows where he wants to go. He's a very strong leader. He took it upon himself. This Smart Growth effort has been Kirk's initiative. The Digital Downtown and downtown revitalization, those have all been things Kirk wanted to do. He made them happen."

Watson was key to the deal that would have put Vignette Corp.'s headquarters in a building on the shores of Town Lake, according to Ford Alexander, a principal with Colliers Oxford Commercial who represented Vignette. "He did everything in his power to make that deal work," Alexander says. "He took some risks."

Vignette pulled out of the deal when the economy soured, considerably slowing its business. Intel Corp.'s downtown building is another victim of the economic slowdown. Even as other downtown projects take shape, the Intel building remains a skeleton as the company waits for the economy to turn around.

While Watson got things moving, he was also what's known in real estate and baseball as a closer. "He seemed to be able to bring the conversation to a conclusion and just do it," Capron says. "Do something. Enact something, even if everybody was not thrilled with it."

While problems such as traffic remain, real estate folks hope the next mayor builds on Watson's bridges. "I hope the next person that takes his place learns the lesson of you can't please everybody all the time, that you need to bring closure to decisions," Capron says. "And that we do not have a resurgence of the political polarization that's often been the case almost like a tennis match of who has control of the ball and that's not productive.