COEUR d’ALENE — After eight years as mayor of Coeur d’Alene, Steve Widmyer is a better person.

That’s according to his wife, Marie.

Her husband doesn’t disagree.

“I have been known not to be the most patient man in the world,” he says, smiling. “I want some things done now. But being mayor has made me evaluate situations, look at it more closely, possibly ask more questions, be more patient, be more understanding.”

Widmyer is sitting in the office of the Widmyer Corporation, a commercial real estate agency in the old Wiggett Building on Fourth and Lakeside.

It’s not his.

It belongs to son Ben Widmyer.

“I was lucky that when I ran for mayor, I basically turned all of my property management and a lot of my real estate deals over to my son,” Widmyer said. “He had come out of college to do that.

“When he built this, he built an office for the old man, hoping that someday I would move over,” Steve Widmyer said.

Which he did, in April.

And he’ll likely be spending more time there with the end of his second four-year term leading the city of Coeur d’Alene.

It’s been a good run, something of which he's proud. He leaves no doubt, he loves this city.

“For me to grow up here and be the mayor of my hometown where my kids were born, where my grandkids are born, quite a privilege,” the youthful 61-year-old said.

In all those mayoral years, he never missed a City Council meeting, which are held twice monthly. Not once. Didn’t call in sick. Didn’t declare a personal day. Didn’t have a family function to attend.

“I just said in my mind that I was going to schedule around every single one of them,” he said. “We scheduled our vacations, we scheduled our trips, we scheduled everything around the first and the third Tuesdays of every month so I could be in that library community room and we could have a meeting.”

The 1978 Coeur d’Alene High School graduate has no regrets about his time as mayor. No decisions he wishes he hadn’t made. No actions he would like to have taken.

“There's always things that you wish you could accomplish more but you know, I hit the ground running when I started. I worked hard the whole eight years that I was there.

"Hopefully, I think I gave the taxpayers their money's worth.”

How he got here

Widmyer is relaxed as he chats. He chuckles as he outlines how he came to be mayor without having aspirations to be a mayor.

“It never was on my radar, to be honest with you. I was happy with what I was doing. I love investing in real estate,” he said.

A "real estate collector" is how he describes it.

“My main passion in real estate is buying older buildings and putting value in them and moving on to the next building,” he said.

He has enjoyed success doing just that and owns a number of properties in Coeur d’Alene and other states, including Oregon and Montana.

But business folks came calling in 2013.

They wanted him to run for mayor, as they felt the city was becoming angry, too much negativity, particularly over the McEuen Field renovation project and an unsuccessful recall campaign because of it. They wanted to see a calming, steady hand at the helm to follow in the steps of Sandi Bloem.

“It pretty much was a divided community,” Widmyer said. “Interesting how things come full circle.”

He agreed to run, quickly put together a campaign plan, and won in November 2013. He received 4,719 votes, 56%, to defeat Mary Souza, with 3,556 votes. He was unopposed when he ran four years later.

“I always had my sights on two terms,” he said. “There's no way you can really accomplish everything you need to accomplish in one term. It takes a good year to figure out what you're doing, especially if you've never done it before."

Widmyer said there was a “dip” of negativity over McEuen Field and the removal of a beloved baseball field and the recall effort that targeted Bloem, councilwoman Deanna Goodlander, and councilmen Mike Kennedy and Woody McEvers.

When he took office, Widmyer hoped to restore confidence in city government and run a tight ship.

“I am a very fiscally conservative person, and so I wanted to make sure that everything that we did in the city, we did it with the cost to our taxpayers in mind,” he said. “I wanted to make sure that we were as efficient as possible, to spend our dollars very, very wisely. And I think we've proven that because of six of the eight years of being in office we've taken 0% property tax increase."

The mayor's salary is $2,700 a month, plus benefits, for what is supposed to be a part-time position.

Considering the hundreds of meetings, ribbon-cuttings, groundbreakings, dinners, banquets and speeches, it probably doesn’t come out to minimum wage.

But the mayor points out it’s not about money. It’s about love of the place you call home and wanting to do right by it.

“Anyone who runs for mayor and is elected mayor, they don't do it for the pay,” he said.

Influences

Widmyer comes from a blue collar family, the son of Duane and Mary Widmyer, that moved to Coeur d’Alene from Minneapolis in the summer of 1963 when he was a 3 years old.

“My dad got a job at Bunker Hill. He drove back and forth from Coeur d’Alene to Kellogg every day for 20 years until they closed,” Widmyer said.

Steve described his father as “no nonsense, no complaining, no whining."

"You get up and you go to work, right? It's what he did every day of his life," he said.

His father today lives in Burke Canyon.

“He’s retired, but he still gets up early morning and does work,” Widmyer said. “So my dad installed, and my mom installed, a tremendous work ethic.”

He also points to Marie for his success. They have been married 35 years and have four children. She is herself an accomplished businesswoman, public speaker, and Mrs. Idaho America title holder.

Marie, Steve says, smooths out some of the rough edges.

By the way, if you want to find them, check mornings in one of Coeur d’Alene’s downtown coffee shops.

“That's our routine. Get up, get ready to go to work. We're always together at a coffee shop,” Widmyer said.

Today

He is proud of where the city of Coeur d’Alene stands.

He is pleased with the renovation of the Memorial Field area, where he played as a kid, and the skate park there named for Councilman Woody McEvers. He believes Atlas Waterfront Park, which opened in late 2020, is a beautiful addition to an already amazing park system.

The city’s business community is thriving, he said.

He takes pride in the city’s public safety record and says the police and fire departments are outstanding.

“We have, during my eight years of time, invested more in public safety for personnel, equipment and supplies, than in any other previous eight years,” he said. “We’ve added a lot of personnel and that's most important.”

The city’s infrastructure, its water and wastewater systems, are sound and prepared to provide services for future growth, Widmyer said.

“We have done a really good job,” he said.

Growth remains a challenge, creating traffic, stressing city resources and forcing housing prices higher.


“We've basically exploded in population just in the last couple years,” he said.

But Coeur d’Alene has maintained the sense of community that he loves about it, just as it did when he was delivering The Coeur d’Alene Press 50 years ago.

The past is important to Widmyer.

He helped saved the historic White House, which was going to be torn down, but instead was moved in 2019 to the base of Tubbs Hill at McEuen Park and will one day be the home of the Museum of North Idaho, of which he serves on the board.

And last year, he helped save another historic home, the Hamilton House on Government Way, teaming up with real estate broker and community leader Don “Pepper” Smock to buy it and lease it to the Music Conservatory of Coeur d’Alene.

“It’s a beautiful house. We're kind of proud of that," he said. "It is a great place.”

A look ahead

Widmyer declined to offer advice to Jim Hammond, incoming mayor. He pointed that out Hammond has been mayor of Post Falls, a city administrator and state senator.

“He doesn't have any learning curve and he’ll jump right in. Jim’s an experienced guy. He probably doesn't need my advice.”

His last mayoral role outside of City Hall was at the Wreaths Across America ceremony at Coeur d’Alene Memorial Gardens the weekend before Christmas.

“It was cold and it was snowing sideways. But I was happy to be there. My wife and I placed quite a few wreaths on a lot of veterans' graves," he said. "And we were excited with such a great way to end my mayor career with that function.”

Will he run for political office again?

Probably not. But maybe.

“You never know what opportunities happen in the future,” he said. “I have a lot of private projects that I'm working on right now that I've kind of put in the pipeline, knowing that in January, I needed something to do right now. But we'll see what the future holds.”

What is certain, he enjoyed being Coeur d’Alene’s mayor, believes he set this city of about 50,000 people and an annual budget of more than $100 million on a firm foundation, and wants to stay here.

“Marie and I are still gonna be around. We're not going anywhere," he said. "Coeur d’Alene has been great to us. It's provided us with a lot of opportunities. And we’re going to give back.”