Gerald Rauenhorst, Twin Cities developer and St. Thomas benefactor, dies at 86

Gerald "Gerry" Rauenhorst -- a development and construction tycoon who grew up without indoor plumbing, pioneered the "design-build" concept and founded what would eventually grow into the Minnetonka-based Opus Group, a commercial real estate powerhouse, died Thursday at the age of 86, according to his family.

School officials noted that Rauenhorst, a University of St. Thomas graduate, was one of the most influential and generous alumni in the St. Paul-based university's history -- often guiding development and helping to design or construct nearly two dozen campus buildings.

"For all his greatness -- and he was truly a great man -- he never came across as anything more than a common man and your next-door neighbor," the Rev.

Gerry Rauenhorst

Born in Olivia, Minn., in 1927, Rauenhorst started in sales amid the Great Depression as a 6-year-old purveyor of sweet corn, working a stand near his family's tenant farm.

"We were poor in material things -- we didn't even have an indoor biffy (toilet) until I was 15 -- but we were rich in the things that count," Rauenhorst, the seventh of eight children, wrote in his 2003 memoir, "A Better Way: Faith, Family, and the First Fifty Years of the Opus Group of Companies."

Rauenhorst graduated from St. Thomas in 1948 with a bachelor's degree in economics. He went on to receive a bachelor's in civil engineering from Marquette University in 1951. After that, he worked for two years as an engineer and job estimator. Then, at age 25, he founded Rauenhorst Construction out of his Richfield home with $354 in cash and a $2,500 loan from his brother, a farmer.

With no employees and the help of his late wife, Henrietta "Hanky" Schmoll Rauenhorst, whom he married in 1950, he worked from sunrise until late into the evening most days, family members said.

That same year, he landed a contract to build a new church for Zion Lutheran in Olivia.

Rauenhorst Construction -- renamed Opus in 1982 -- grew as its founder bought and developed swaths of suburban land using the new "design-build" concept, in which both architectural and construction services were provided by a single company, without contracting them out.

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Gerald Rauenhorst, Twin Cities developer and St. Thomas benefactor, dies at 86