In 1960, Dean Swank worked at his father’s lumber and hardware store in the tiny town of Valier. But he had a degree in architecture and engineering from Montana State University and an itch to start building.
So Swank started up a small construction company. A few remodel jobs trickled in here and there, in Valier and other communities along Montana’s sparse Hi-Line. But there wasn’t anything in these modest beginnings to indicate where construction would eventually take Swank.
Today, he is the CEO of Swank Enterprises, a large commercial construction firm based out of Valier and Kalispell.
“We’re well over a $100-million company now,” Swank said.
Swank Enterprises is celebrating its 50-year anniversary. In August, the company was presented a plaque from its longtime bonding agent, Great Falls’ Cogswell Agency, celebrating Swank’s track record of more than $1.3 billion in “successfully completed bonded projects.”
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The Swank Enterprises office in Kalispell. |
But long before success was measured in the millions or billions, it was measured in baby steps, such as the time Swank first added a full-time superintendent to his crew in the early 1960s. In 1963, his business incorporated as Swank Enterprises.
Some of Swank’s early projects foreshadowed the types of commercial endeavors he would encounter later, beginning in the 1980s and especially during the building boom after the millennium.
Swank built a bank and church in Valier, a bank and office building in Shelby, and an elementary school in Conrad. Decades later, Swank Enterprises would head up construction of Glacier High School, completed in 2007.
Other structures standing in towns around Valier bear witness to Swank’s early legacy: a lodge, a livestock center, a jail, and multiple hospitals, which would become a specialty of his. Swank said his company has completed projects at the Kalispell Regional Medical Center for the last 10 years.
To date, Swank Enterprises has built more than 100 schools, 24 banks, 21 nursing homes and 14 hospitals. Swank has also worked on four airports in Montana and performed work out of state.
In the 1980s, Swank’s sons Derek and Dewey joined the company. Swank said the arrival of his sons gave the firm four project managers and greatly increased annual output, including more jobs in the Flathead area.
Swank Enterprises opened up a Kalispell office in 1986 and Dewey moved here to become the Flathead manager. The firm’s first job in the Flathead was building an addition to Kalispell’s Outlaw Inn. Today, Swank Enterprises still has offices in both Valier and Kalispell, as well as the family’s original lumber store in Valier. Swank’s daughter runs the lumber store.
The company has 13 employees at the Valier office, 12 in Kalispell and more than 200 out in the field, working on 30 projects at any given time, Swank said. Business slowed, as would be expected, when the building boom died off. But Swank said his company has maintained its pace of 30 ongoing projects.
“We have a lot of jobs,” he said. “There’s just not enough big jobs.”
In recent years, Swank Enterprises has become a trusted construction company for the National Park Service. This summer, Swank finished work on the $27 million Old Faithful Visitor Education Center in Yellowstone. In the past several years, the company has also completed the Canyon Visitor Education Center and $22 million of work on the Old Faithful Inn.
In Glacier, Swank Enterprises has performed a number of restoration projects at Many Glacier Hotel over the last decade. The company was awarded a $9.5 million contract earlier this year to refurbish a large portion of the hotel’s interior. Work begins this fall and lasts through the winter.
Swank said, as CEO of a large construction firm, he has learned two central keys to success. One is people. The second is bonding capacity. As in, first you have to make sure you’re working with good people, and secondly you have to build your reputation to a point where bonding companies are comfortable providing more funds for projects.
Patsy Benson, an assistant to the project manager at Swank, said she is confident, from working at Swank for eight years, that her boss understands the importance of people. And, judging by the excellent track record with Cogswell Agency, Swank has bonding capacity under control too.
“He’s an amazing man,” Benson said. “People who start at Swank Enterprises stay here.”