Larry Laukka

Larry Laukka always thinks big.

“I would say 90 percent of my volunteer work has revolved around expansion,” Laukka says with a chuckle. “That’s one thing I’m very good at.”

If you’ve ever driven by Edina’s Edinborough or Centennial Lakes projects, both developed by his company, his gift is obvious. But it’s his willingness to use that gift to help Twin Cities institutions for the past forty years that is impressive. Laukka’s volunteer resumé includes the Citizen’s League, Colonial Church, the YMCA, and Metropolitan Council to name a few. And Laukka helped all of the organizations consider, study, or deliberate expansion, whether of physical presence or ideas.

Perhaps the most visible of Laukka’s expansive ideas started with a letter to college buddy and fraternity brother Fred Friswold, a member of the University of Minnesota Alumni Association (and member of our Volunteer Hall of Fame 2007 class). “I suggested some things in a letter, and he suggested I volunteer,” Laukka says. “That was twenty years ago.”

It took about half that time for Laukka, Friswold, Dale Olseth, and other alumni to get the stunning McNamara Alumni Center built, but Laukka didn’t want to stop there. “I wanted to find more public space to honor our scholars,” Laukka says, adding that the U has plenty, including Nobel and Pulitzer winners. “I wanted a way to link the alumni center with academia,” he says. The resulting Scholars Walk was completed in 2006 and also includes an Alumni Wall of Honor.

You might think Laukka has completed his service to the U of M and other organizations, but fifty years after graduating from the U, Laukka is thinking big again, this time as a senior adviser to UMore Park, the U’s 5,000-acre chunk of land near Rosemount in Dakota County, which he calls a “tremendous resource.” He advised the executive committee regarding land-use proposals, which are now available for public comment, and hopes in the end to “make something of value for the university.”

And while he has taken a part-time gig at his company—to make way for his son and spend more time in Florida with his wife, Mary—he has no plans to stop his work in the North Star State. “This is my state, this is where I call home,” Laukka says. “And I have no ambition to retire.”