Attorney and business leader Wilmer Mitchell passed away last week. Wilmer was one of my “windows” into Pensacola’s history. We would have lunch at Apple Annie’s, and Wilmer would regale me with stories about Bob Snow, Seville Quarter and what downtown Pensacola was like in the 1960s and 1970s.
- In February 2016, I interviewed Wilmer for WCOA’s “Pensacola Speaks.” I searched through my files and found the broadcast.
Before Seville Quarter became a Pensacola institution, there was a Dixieland jazz musician with big dreams, a skeptical banker, and a lawyer willing to take a chance on downtown when everyone else was heading to the mall.
That lawyer was Wilmer Mitchell, who walked into the story in 1967 when Bob Snow showed up at his downtown office at 6:30 p.m. needing legal help to open what would become Rosie OO’Grady’s
Snow had a problem: he needed $3,500 for air conditioning and couldn’t get financing. Mitchell’s solution was simple—he marched Snow across to C&P Bank and introduced him to Roger Doyle. The banker agreed to lend $5,000, reasoning that Snow would “need some money in the till.” The next day, after a wildly successful opening night with 400 people waiting in the street, Snow paid off the entire loan.
Mitchell recalls that opening night vividly—the crowd standing from 8 p.m. until 2 a.m. as Bob Snow led the brass band down the stairs in grand theatrical fashion.
After Snow built his Church Street Station empire in Orlando and ventured into Las Vegas casinos, Mitchell and his family purchased Seville Quarter. Today, multiple generations of Mitchells work at the complex, maintaining the vision that started with a handshake and a small business loan nearly five decades ago.
- “Bob knew all along that if he ever sold it, he ought to sell it to me,” Mitchell said with characteristic understatement about taking over one of Pensacola’s most beloved landmarks.
Listen to the interview.