Former Mayor George Latimer makes Midway his new home

Story and photo by MARGIE O’LOUGHLIN

Seated in his apartment above the Green Line corridor, former mayor George Latimer has an ample view of the streetscape of St. Paul and the skyline of Minneapolis. Latimer served as St. Paul’s mayor from 1976–1990, and now can look out over a city he and his staff helped to transform.

A resident of Episcopal Homes, 490 Lynnhurst Ave. E., since last year, Latimer joked about the ongoing rivalry between the Twin Cities. “Well, I sure do like to have fun with it,” he said. “In the end, I see two cities that are part of a regional community. We flourish because of each other, but that said, we are still two very different cities. It goes deep into our history on both sides. I see St. Paul as operating in a way that’s more collaborative, and Minneapolis in a way that’s more confrontational.”

He continued, “St. Paul has always been, and probably always will be, Minnesota’s second city. We simply are more parochial in our thinking, which has both pluses and minuses. St. Paul residents care deeply about place, community, and connectedness. We are slower to change and slower to embrace change.”

Latimer is a new-comer to a very changed stretch of University Ave. Beneath his sixth story windows, the Green Line speeds by. More than a few articles credit Latimer’s administration with planting the seeds for light rail but he said, “We never came up with anything quite that great in our thinking about transportation. The idea of using transportation as a powerful tool for new development is brilliant. All of the housing that’s being provided for people, especially young people and people who might not have a lot of money. I see the Green Line as the most transformational thing that’s happened to this old river city.”

Latimer will be turning 81 this month. He said, “Of all the things I reflect on with fondness that came out of my tenure as mayor, the one I feel best about was bringing the Job Corps to St. Paul in 1981. It’s still housed on Snelling Ave. across from the State Fairgrounds. Bethel College had the space originally, and when they moved to the suburbs, we had to find a new a new tenant. It was perfect for the Job Corps—a ready made campus just waiting for the students to move back in. Though the program is much smaller now, it’s still running.”

Job Corps is a residential educational and vocational training program for economically disadvantaged youth. “The last time I checked,” he said, “they had graduated more than 10,000 students ages 16-21. They had a placement rate of 91% in successful employment. These are kids who, for one reason or another, didn’t make it through school or into the workforce the first time.“

Latimer continued, “If you live long enough you’ll see a lot of dreams dashed, and maybe have a few dreams that should have been dashed. But Job Corps will always be a warm, abiding memory for me.

Latimer has retained his signature beard, openness and sense of humor. “We had a lot of successes,” he said, “like creating the Family Housing Fund and District Energy, revitalizing Lower Town and building Energy Park. But, we also had some huge failures. Galtier Plaza was a bust financially, and Town Square was a terrible decision architecturally. I taught a seminar on learning from the failures of our administration at Macalester several years ago. The current mayor Chris Coleman, who’s a good friend of mine, said, “I heard about that seminar Latimer is teaching, and I think it should be a year-long course.”

After his last term as mayor, Latimer went on to become dean of Hamline Law School (1990-93), special assistant to the Office of Housing and Urban Development in Washington DC (1993-95) and a visiting professor in Geography and Urban Studies at Macalester since 1996. He continues to work part-time as a labor arbitrator.

Latimer, whose nearly 14 years in office mark the longest mayoral tenure in the history of the city, is quick to acknowledge that he didn’t stand alone. “What occurs during any single political administration has a lot to do with what you inherit,” Latimer said. “We were lucky because so much positive growth had taken place in St. Paul in the 1960’s. I also had tremendous people around me: the civil servants that were already there when I was elected and the people I was able to appoint.”

The former mayor also gives credit to the strong family that surrounds him. When asked how he chose Episcopal Homes after 40 years of living in Crocus Hill, he joked, “Truthfully, every major decision I’ve ever made has been influenced by one of the women in my life: my Lebanese mother, my wife, or one of my daughters. In this case, my daughters made me do it.”

These days he seems happily ensconced in his new apartment—surrounded by photographs of his family and friends, political cartoons and a great many books. Latimer is a dedicated reader, a quality he claims to have inherited from his English father—a quiet man who was a great lover of books.

When asked about the renaming of the Central Library in his honor two years ago, the outspoken former mayor said, “I hadn’t heard a word about it—until the day it happened. Mayor Chris Coleman came to our house carrying something in a plain, brown wrapper. It could have been a fish for all I knew. I opened the wrapper and inside was a plaque designating the downtown St. Paul library as the George Latimer Central Library. I was completely speechless. Coleman said, ‘I never thought I could silence George Latimer,’ but he was wrong.”