Annabelle Homes -- The Back Story -- The Oil Patch -- The Bakken, North Dakota, USA -- February 20, 2012

Another great human interest story coming out of the Bakken.

I was probably the first to blog about Annabelle homes -- I have it tagged/labeled which means this story impressed me from the beginning. 

But it's a great story about a unique developer -- an "urban architect" and Harvard graduate, based in Minneapolis, changing the landscape of Stanley, North Dakota, in the heart of the Bakken.

City leaders here knew right away that Dean Dovolis was different than the 417 developers who came before him.

For one thing, he wasn’t a developer. Not yet anyway.

Dovolis was a Minneapolis architect who heard about North Dakota’s oil boom at a time when the economy elsewhere was struggling.

He also had a Harvard degree in urban design, financial backing from investors and a vision for creating communities.

“I could tell in the first few minutes that he had a spark of brilliance,” said Stanley City Council member Dennis Lindahl.

Today, Dovolis’ company, Annabelle Homes, has three housing developments under construction and plans to expand to numerous other communities affected by the oil boom. 

The rest of the story is at The Dickinson Press.