North Dakota's Newest And Largest Airport Terminal To Open Monday -- February 26, 2016

Roers Investments as announced the opening:

... of its first multi-family project in Williston. The Bluffs of Williston is a new apartment community located in the Harvest Hills Development. The site features a total of 148 units that are now open for leasing. RI has residential and multi-use projects in five communities in the Bakken Shale Oil and Gas region; Williston, Stanley, Tioga, Watford City and Sidney, MT. Some of its newest tenants are The Smiling Moose Deli in Watford City and Ackerman Estvold in Williston.

Did you see The Smiling Moose Deli mentioned in the previous story? Here's a bit more: The Smiling Moose Deli has restaurants in Williston and Watford City.

To reach its growth goal of 100 units by 2020, Smiling Moose Rocky Mountain Deli is embarking on a complete brand overhaul, including a major menu update and a complete restaurant redesign. The franchise currently has 19 delis in seven states including restaurants in Williston and Watford City. To meet the 2020 goal, the brand will focus growth in areas where the demographic mirrors its guest base, which includes Arizona, Colorado, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and Wyoming said CEO Sue Daggett. 

I didn't quite understand why a proposed mixed-use housing and retail development (Fivesouth), in downtown Bismarck would be in the Williston Wire, but then in the small print:

Developer Don Cardon, CEO of Phoenix-based Cardon Development Group, unveiled the FiveSouth development this past March (2015). Cardon is also partnering with the City of Williston on the Sloulin Field International Airport Redevelopment.

In North Dakota there's a lot of concern about how falling crude oil prices have idled drilling rigs, pushed down production and cut into state and local tax coffers.

But another type of industrial activity--constructing transmission lines--is in full swing. The collapse of oil prices has given utilities and project developers an opportunity to catch up to burgeoning electric demand in the oil fields. In recent years, diesel generators have provided a large share of electricity to well sites and remote processing and storage facilities.

It's dead but we will see stories on this pipeline for years and years to come:

Justin Kringstad, director of the North Dakota Pipeline Authority, said pipeline capacity added in 2015 via Kinder Morgan's Double H Pipeline in western North Dakota, a decline in oil field production and changed market conditions have reduced that state's reduced crude-by-rail volume. Yet even with North Dakota's production decline to 1.15 million gallons per day, the state still lacks sufficient pipeline takeaway capacity. One anticipated project - Enbridge Energy's 225,000-barrel-per-day Sandpiper pipeline from North Dakota and across northern Minnesota - has been delayed until 2019 while Minnesota regulators review environmental issues.

North Dakota's largest airport terminal to officially open Monday:

An impressive, $43 million airport terminal was unveiled to the public at an open house at Minot International Airport Saturday. The building that will be the state's largest airport terminal doesn't officially become operational until February 29, 2016. But for six hours on Saturday, doors opened to give area residents a chance to wander the walkways, check out operations areas that won't be publicly accessible once the terminal opens and take in the airfield panorama from the glassed-in second-floor secured area.

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JE Dunn

On my most recent trip to the Bakken, I saw "JE Dunn" everywhere. It is the prime contractor for the new Williston High School which will open this fall (2016). From The Dickinson Press:

With the oil boom in full swing, Marc Mellmer saw the possibilities for growth and looming building projects in western North Dakota, and he wanted JE Dunn Construction to be a part of it.

Nearly three years and more than 20 building projects later, the 31-year-old construction operations coordinator sits in his sensible, windowless office in one of Dickinson’s newest buildings — one his firm had no hand in building, he notes with a laugh — and said despite the economic downturn in North Dakota set off by plunging oil prices, business is still looking good.

This year, JE Dunn will begin or continue work on — among its many projects — the North Dakota governor’s residence and the new Bank of North Dakota Financial Center in Bismarck, Harold Newman Arena in Jamestown, and the Trinity High School reconstruction and expansion, a project near to Mellmer’s heart as he’s a graduate of the Dickinson Catholic school.

Mellmer graduated from Trinity 13 years ago and went on to earn his degree in construction management at the University of Minnesota. He was working for JE Dunn on the Sanford Health Clinic in Detroit Lakes, MN, when he began pushing for the company to bid on projects in booming Dickinson.

JE Dunn came to the area in 2011 to build the Mercy Medical Center Birthing Center in Williston, where they’ve had an office since 2012. Not long after that, the company was aw arded building contracts for the $70 million Williston Area Recreation Center and the $100 million CHI St. Joseph’s Health campus in Dickinson.

Much, much more at the link. It's an incredible story.

J. E. Dunn Construction Group at wiki.

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Update on Industry in Southwest North Dakota Following The Boom

From The Dickinson Press:

Though the oil industry tends to be more visible, Dickinson’s manufacturing sector has historically been a significant driver of the town’s economy.

Gaylon Baker, executive vice president of the Stark Development Corp., said there are more than a dozen manufacturing businesses in the immediate Dickinson area that collectively employ about 1,500 people.

Baker said the diversity of the sector — which makes goods ranging from learning and instructional kits for the schoolroom to metal fabrication bound for coal mines — is the “great thing about it” and protects against failure of any one trend.

Another benefit of the Dickinson manufacturing scene is the “organic” nature of the companies that make it.

“This is home to them,” Baker said. “And as they grow and expand, this will continue to be home. We’re seeing Dickinson-based companies putting operations in other towns, which is good for them and also good for us.”

The article goes on to mention several companies thriving in Dickinson.