From his perch on the fourth floor of the Hazeltine Gates building in northern Chaska, Julius “Jules” Smith looks out on a city vastly different from the one he grew up in.

Today, traffic whizzes by on busy Highway 41 as commuters zip around and through town. The farms that once dotted the land around him have long since been replaced by suburban neighborhoods and retail and commercial developments. And just to the south, a new freeway links the city with the rest of the Twin Cities metro.

It’s a far cry from the Chaska of the 1930s.

“We had 1,700 or 1,900 people,” recalled Smith. “It was a rural community. Everyone walked to work. If you went to St. Paul, they wrote about it in the paper.”

But if Smith were upset about his once small river town’s metamorphosis into a full-fledged city (occasionally even referred to as a suburb), he would have no one to blame but himself. While many can claim having a hand in Chaska’s growth and development over the years, perhaps no one more than Smith has had such a far-reaching effect on the city.

At the April 7 Chaska City Council meeting, Mayor Gary Van Eyll recognized Smith’s efforts in Chaska with a commemorative plaque.

“He’s had a long history with Chaska,” said Van Eyll. “He was a former city attorney, lifelong resident, Jonathan vice-president and (Metropolitan) Council rep through three governors.”

Smith retired from his seat on the Met Council late last year. At age 77, he’s now hoping to get some traveling in without the guilt of missing meetings.

Lawful beginnings

“Since I was a little kid, I knew I would be a lawyer,” said Smith. “It never occurred to me to be anything else.”

Smith came from a family busy in law and politics. His father was twice the mayor of Chaska. His grandfather was a lawyer in Shakopee.

After getting an early education at Guardian Angels Catholic School, Smith’s mother sent him to St. John’s Preparatory School in Collegeville. He later went on to study law at the University of Minnesota where he became active in politics and eventually secured a job as special secretary to Governor C. Elmer Anderson.

“I knew the right people,” explained Smith, as to how he got the job.

But he wasn’t working long for the governor before he realized that it was hardly a glamorous job.

“The governor doesn’t ask you for advice,” he noted.

Smith set his sights on Washington, D.C. where he hoped to find where the “action” was. He got a job lining up votes for the Minnesota delegation and reveled in the pulse of the nation’s capitol. “Washington is pretty exciting,” he said.

Despite the excitement, Smith took the advice of a senator who pulled him aside one day and showed him the writing on the wall – legislative assistants don’t become party powerhouses.

“He told me to go back to Minnesota and get involved in law or the party,” recalled Smith.

After only a year in Washington, D.C., Smith returned to Minnesota. Initially, he took a job as a legal editor at West Publishing Company, but later that year he left to work at Chaska’s Odell & Odell law firm as an associate attorney.

For 12 years, Smith immersed himself in local legal issues. As Chaska was still a small town, that meant working with brickyards, farmers and handling real estate transactions.

“I had most of Scott and Carver county business,” he said.

During that time, Smith got involved in local government, becoming the first chairman of the Carver County Planning Commission. He took that opportunity to press Scott and Carver counties to join the metropolitan area, eventually succeeding in expanding from a five- to a seven-county metro area.

“We knew Chaska was gonna be hit, we knew it would grow,” he explained. “We thought we better be ready for it.”

He then served as the Carver County representative on the Twin Cities Metropolitan Planning Commission, where he spent his days working on the future location of roads and reviewing sewer, water and traffic studies.

Chaska expands

In 1961, Smith was appointed city attorney for Chaska. At the time, it was a nine-member council with no city manager. Together they started making some significant changes in the city.

“We created a sewer plant, a planning commission and a library board,” he said.

They also expanded the city’s boundaries beyond its humble downtown stronghold.

“The council knew they had to get over the hill,” said Smith. “There were a lot of terrific reasons for doing it.”

Perhaps the most compelling was when Hazeltine National Golf Course began to show interest in 1,500 acres two-and-a-half miles outside of town. Looking for someone to provide sewer and water to the site, the council started the annexation process.

Weeks of hearings and appeals followed in what would be a contentious annexation, but eventually, Chaska grew – stretching north to the Twin Cities & Western railroad tracks, east to Audubon Road and to Bavaria Road in the west. 

With that battle won, the council soon began looking at a second annexation that would push Chaska’s city limits all the way to Highway 5. It too was successful.

“We increased the size of Chaska 20 times,” noted Smith.

Jonathan

In 1967, Smith became involved in a new venture that would set Chaska on a new path.

Smith still remembers meeting businessman/State Sen. Henry McKnight at his Chaska farm.

“He said, ‘Let’s take a walk,’” Smith recalled. As they walked - McKnight in his farm wear and Smith in a business suit - he wondered what McKnight could want from him. His question was soon answered.

“He said to me, ‘Jules, how would you like to help me build a New Town?’” said Smith. “I just about fell over.”

Excited by the planning concepts New Towns were employing in those days, Smith gladly accepted.

“I went to work for Jonathan and started buying farms and doing the legal work to carry on Jonathan,” he said. It was a job he would quickly grow to love. “I never thought of it as a job,” he said. “I loved to go to work.

“Henry McKnight opened up a world I didn’t know existed.”

Smith said the “New Town” concepts were fascinating – everything from group mailboxes and public greenways to an early form of the Internet and strictly pedestrian trails.

But the Jonathan new town would never see its full potential. McKnight died in late 1972 and his children were reluctant to carry out his vision, Smith recalled. McKnight’s death, and a slow housing market are often cited as a reason for Jonathan’s demise.

By 1974, the Jonathan Development Corporation had suffered a series of unfortunate events, culminating with the collapse of a deal with American Linen that would have kept the project afloat. By 1978, the Department of Housing and Urban Development reported plans to foreclose on the JDC for defaulting on a loan for over $20 million.

“That was the end of Jonathan,” said Smith, who admits that not carrying McKnight’s plans through to fruition was hard. “It hurt,” he said.

Smith doesn’t see the project as a failure, however. “You always read that it failed,” he said. “Well, it didn’t fail.

“It was a tremendous thing for Chaska,” he continued. “We have one of the largest industrial parks in the suburbs. And it allowed for development in an orderly way.”

Smith said he is proud of his work with the JDC. “The pride in it is that I had something to do with it,” he said.

Ren fest

Following the demise of the Jonathan Development Corporation, Smith opted to focus on his private law practice. He opened an office in Edina, specializing in large-scale real estate transactions.

He also dabbled in teaching, served on several boards and foundations, and even found himself getting involved in Renaissance Festivals.

After being introduced to the concept in 1971 through the Minnesota festival’s early Jonathan beginnings, Smith initially invested in the Minnesota fair to keep it going. He later purchased a festival in Maryland. For a man with a strong interest in history, the festivals provided an intriguing way to go back in time. He was even known to dress up as Lord Burly from time to time.  

Today, renaissance festivals are a family affair, as many of his sons are employed by his International Renaissance Festivals company on the East Coast.

Met Council

Rounding out Smith’s impressive resume is a 14-year stint on the Metropolitan Council. He was appointed in 1993. The Met Council is a coordinating body that oversees activities and services that cross municipal and county boundaries – everything from sewer systems and major parts to housing stock and transportation.

Smith said the council is a critical part of the metropolitan area.

“If you’ve got two people you don’t need many rules,” he explained. “If you’ve got 2 million, you need more rules.”

Today it’s hard not to feel strong ties to the metro area. “You get invested in it,” he said. “You care about it.”

That can mean anything from worrying about water capacities and how to combine water systems, to thinking about incorporating small cities into larger ones to finding incentives for local governments to allow gravel pits. It’s a hard mentality to give up.

 But retiring from the Met Council late last year, Smith now looks forward to getting in some well-deserved travel, including a family excursion to a Wyoming dude ranch.

He looks back on his career with great satisfaction now.

“I’ve been very lucky as lawyers go,” he said. “I’ve always been involved in positive things.”

Mollee Francisco, staff writer