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Before he became a respected and admired downtown Pensacola business owner, a prominent attorney and a local civic leader, Wilmer Mitchell was known as an athlete.
Long before his family’s ownership of iconic Seville Quarter, or even before the establishment of the sprawling bar-and-restaurant, with its various themed rooms, Mitchell was making the pages of the local newspapers for his sporting prowess.
And he loved and participated in multiple sports, so much so that one January 1953 Pensacola News Journal story about the upcoming Pensacola City Table Tennis Tournament at Sanders Beach noted that Mitchell’s scheduled table tennis match would be postponed a day because Mitchell was playing an out-of-town basketball game as a member of the Pensacola Junior College (now Pensacola State College) team.
Playing for PSC, he was alternately referred to as a “scrappy forward” or “sharp-shooting” forward by the media, building on his success at Pensacola High School where he was a leader on the 1951 state championship team.
Wilmer, a native Pensacolian born at Sacred Heart Hospital on April 7, 1933, was a two-time Pensacola Country Club Men’s Golf Champion (1966, 1968) followed by a PCC Men’s Tennis Champion (1975). He was named Pensacola Sports Association Sportsman of the Year in 1971 and in 1984 he was inducted into the organization’s Hall of Fame.
And yeah, he was the Grand Poobah of Government Street, with his law office tucked into the maze-like Seville Quarter complex he and his family resurrected in 1988, and where his children and other family members still manage and work at today.
Mitchell died on Nov. 11, 2025, in Pensacola, surrounded by family members. He was 92 years old.
“He was always competitive,” said his son Buck Mitchell, who is marketing director, among other things, at Seville Quarter. “He and Joe Endry were the only ones to win PCC’s golf and tennis championships.”
Mitchell earned his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Florida and remained an avid Florida fan and booster through his life.
He served as president of the Escambia-Santa Rosa Bar Association at one point, and his admissions to the U.S. District Court, U.S. Court of Appeals and U.S. Supreme Court highlighted his legal expertise.
But in 1967, he would meet entrepreneur Bob Snow and would become Snow’s attorney as he worked to convert a run-down 19th-century warehouse on equally depressing East Government Street into a bustling downtown hotspot called Rosie O’Grady’s, which would expand into Seville Quarter. Snow, with his attorney Mitchell entrenched on the complex’s second floor, would operate the ever-popular Seville Quarter until he sold it in the mid-1980s, with Mitchell and his family purchasing it a few years later in 1988.
Snow died in January 2025 at the age of 82. He also founded Orlando’s Church Street Station with Rosie O’Grady’s Goodtime Emporium in the 1970s.
Upon purchasing Seville Quarter, Wilmer Mitchell told the News Journal that Seville Quarter would operate as “a Mom and Pop” affair, and that vision remains true to this day when there is always a family member, or most likely a few, working at establishment at any given time.
He immediately pushed the city to reopen part of East Government Street that had been closed, and bring city landscaping to the area, which was still filled with boarded up structures, despite Seville Quarter’s already-long presence on the historic street. Three of the abandoned and boarded structures directly across Seville Square were city-owned. Today, across the street is The District, Seville Quarter’s popular, swanky steak and seafood restaurant, and The Voices of Pensacola Multicultural Center.
Mitchell championed the area’s progress while also preserving so much of the area’s heritage, including the Seville Quarter complex, with its New Orleans’ vibe and mysterious, and supposedly haunted, nooks and crannies.
The family restored the historic brick building next door, a former sheet metal fabricating company, in 2003 as Seville Quarter’s Heritage Hall, a banquet space. Mitchell is a Pensacola Heritage Foundation Hall of Fame inductee.
Mitchell is survived by his wife, Edna Slauson Mitchell, and seven children—Jack Williams, Louise Williams Carlson, Doug Mitchell, Scott Mitchell, Clifton Mitchell, Brian Kinzig, Buck Mitchell—along with 19 grandchildren.
Buck Mitchell said he hopes people remember his father as someone who worked to better, and always championed, downtown Pensacola.
“He really loved Pensacola and was so proud of this town,” he said. “He was involved in the community and was always working with a charity or trying to find a way to make a difference. That’s one of the things that he stressed to us, that helping your community is one of the most important things you can do.”
In 1967, Mitchell was named March of Dimes “Man of the Year” for his leadership as chairman of the Escambia County Chapter of the National Foundation of March of Dimes and helped the organization reach record fund-raising levels at the time.
Other honors include Pensacola Sports Association Sportsman of the Year; Pensacola Sports Association Hall of Fame; Pensacola High School Hall of Fame; Pensacola Heritage, and Northwest Florida Gator Club Hall of Fame. Mitchell was proud of his 25 years as general chairman of the American Amateur Classic Golf Tournament, working to advance a game he loved (and was good at) at the amateur level.
But Buck Mitchell said his father’s moral leadership was also key to his and the family’s success.
“It was just the way he did business,” he said. “He told us you pay your taxes so don’t have to look over your shoulder. You do the right thing, and you’ll have peace of mind. And that’s the way we do it today, always trying to contribute to Pensacola and the community.”
A graveside service with family and friends will be held at the historic St. John’s Cemetery on G. St. at noon, Nov. 28, followed by a celebration of life at Seville Quarter.