St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman confirmed Thursday he will not seek re-election next year, an announcement that came as little surprise to political observers but sets in motion the race to replace him.

The 55-year-old Coleman, nearing the end of his third four-year term in office, declined to discuss his future plans and remained coy about whether he will run for governor in 2018, when Gov. Mark Dayton steps aside.

“All things are possible, but we’ll talk about the future in the future,” the mayor said in a wide-ranging interview in his City Hall office Thursday. “It’s been a great 11 years, with another year to go. … I’ve lived here all my life. (St. Paul is) the strongest it’s been in my lifetime.”

To date, candidates for the mayor’s seat include former city council member Melvin Carter III and former school board member Tom Goldstein.

Former council member Pat Harris is widely seen as a likely contender. State Rep. Tim Mahoney, DFL-St. Paul, announced on his Facebook page last week that he would not seek the mayor’s office.

The list of candidates could stretch well past a dozen by next November, though, when the race will be decided by ranked-choice ballot.

There will be no political primary to whittle down contenders, though party endorsements could serve a similar purpose. DFL precinct caucuses and ward conventions begin in April.

Coleman, who defeated former Mayor Randy Kelly in 2005, will be the third longest-serving mayor in the city’s history after George Latimer, who served from 1976 to 1990, and Robert A. Smith, who served on and off from 1887 to 1908.

Later Thursday, the mayor met with reporters and dozens of invited guests at the Lake Monster Brewing Co., one of the city’s newest tap rooms on Vandalia Street, across from the Rock-Tenn paper plant, to share career highlights that easily could have been mistaken for a campaign stump speech.

Attendees included former Mayors Latimer and Jim Scheibel. Deputy Mayor Kristin Beckmann and former Deputy Mayors Ann Mulholland and Paul Williams delivered opening remarks.

The venue was intended to highlight the twin accomplishments of his tenure: amping up the city’s profile by injecting more soul into St. Paul’s cultural climate, and retaining jobs at risk of moving to other corners of the state, if not leaving Minnesota entirely.

“One of the reasons we’re at Lake Monster is because there’s 400 people working across the street at Rock-Tenn,” Coleman said. “And those jobs almost left town.”

When Rock-Tenn indicated the plant might close a few years ago, the St. Paul Port Authority and a community task force worked with the company to help cut costs through a new energy strategy.

The plant stayed put.

Coleman pointed to similar efforts to keep J&J Distributing, Pier Foundry and Gerdau Steel operating within the city’s borders.

Actual job growth has been modest relative to Minneapolis or Bloomington, but the mayor said it’s become easier to draw “creative” businesses to sites such as Vandalia Tower, the redeveloped KingKoil Mattress factory.

In addition to Lake Monster, the converted factory near University Avenue and Minnesota 280 leases space to architects and art galleries, cable-access studios and consulting firms, among other small businesses.

Following the Great Recession, St. Paul has rebounded, albeit not as strongly as Minneapolis, and seen a population rebound, with the Metropolitan Council estimating the city last year surpassed the 300,000 mark for the first time since the 1970s.

“The mortgage foreclosure crisis was a huge, huge kick in the shin for the city,” Coleman said.

The mayor pointed to the recent redevelopment of the former main post office on Kellogg Boulevard as a project that might have languished in years past. Private developers recently converted the 17-story post office into luxury apartments adjoining a new Hyatt Place hotel.

“The Custom House alone, that is a building that in another era would have sat empty for a long, long period of time,” Coleman said.

Fueled by the Metro Transit’s Green Line, which debuted in 2014 along University Avenue, the mayor said the city has added permanent cultural fixtures during his decade in office.

A new performance hall welcomes visitors at the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts. Once in danger of closing, the Twin Cities Jazz Festival and the “Music in Mears” concerts have become anchor performances downtown. And the downtown Palace Theatre will start showing live music acts in a matter of weeks. Meanwhile, the St. Paul Saints play at the new CHS Field in Lowertown, and the Minnesota United FC soccer team is planning its own Midway stadium.

The next mayor will inherit plenty of challenges, including the city’s high poverty rate, and the sometimes difficult relationship between St. Paul’s high-minority neighborhoods and police and public safety officials. With discussions around paid sick leave, paid parental leave and climate change bogged down in Congress, Coleman — the former president of the National League of Cities — said municipalities like St. Paul must continue to lead the charge through their own local action.

President-elect Donald Trump has threatened to withhold federal funding from so-called “sanctuary cities” if they fail to work with federal immigration authorities to detain illegal immigrants. In a recent op-ed submission to the Pioneer Press, the mayor clarified what level of cooperation the federal authorities can expect.

In his remarks at Lake Monster, Coleman called immigrants such as his own grandmother — who fled Ireland’s poverty — the bedrock of St. Paul.

“You are a part of the fabric of this community, and we will do everything to resist the attempts of anyone who would try to destroy that fabric,” he said. “St. Paul will continue to be a light of hope for people like my mother, who grew up so poor she was lucky some nights to have a piece of white bread with lard on it for dinner. And yet she went on to college. She raised six kids. And she got to see her son become the mayor of her hometown.”