David Neenan, founder of Neenan Archistruction in Fort Collins, died earlier this week at the age of 80.
The company that bears his name announced the news on Neenan’s social media pages: “We are saddened to share that our founder David Neenan passed away earlier this week. David will live on through his legacy at The Neenan Company; his innovative mindset and kind spirit are the foundation of the work we do. We are forever grateful for the trailblazing he has done in his life both professionally and personally. Our thoughts are with his loved ones during this time.”
Neenan leaves a legacy of public service, accountability, philanthropy, leadership and the buildings his company built.
He served on the Poudre School District Board of Education for eight years, six as board president; wrote books; chaired the former economic development group Fort Collins Inc.; taught seminars worldwide on helping businesspeople cope with the problems of operating a business; and often quoted philosophers.
Neenan got into the construction business when he purchased a 7-year-old Fort Collins business, Burton Builders, in 1973.
The company survived major challenges along the way, the first in 1976, which the company refers to as “The Casper Disaster,” and the second in 2012 when structural issues were found at 14 schools built by the company.
In 1976, Neenan got a job to build a health club in Casper, Wyoming. Almost everything went wrong with the job, he told the Coloradoan in a 1991 interview. The price to build was based on preliminary drawings, but plans were changed before construction started and the owners refused to make allowances. The work started late in the building season; labor and supervisory problems followed.
The company was deep in debt and Neenan’s financial advisers recommended he declare bankruptcy. He decided that was not an option and threw out the conventional business rules. Then he took the doors off all the offices in the building. If it was going to survive, there could be no hiding, he said.
Within seven years the debt was gone and Neenan was a thriving, solidly profitable business.
“Our approach is non-adversarial,” he said at the time. “If you have no cooperation, you have no creativity. Creativity doesn’t pop up when people are trying to cover their butts.”
From the Casper Disaster, Neenan coined the term “archistruction” that provided customers with a one-stop shop for design and construction. The approach forces the company to take full responsibility for projects — because there aren’t any other companies involved — and allows them to collaborate with the client through the whole process, he said.
The company again faced a major setback in 2012 when 14 schools built with funds from Building Excellent Schools Today, or BEST, were found to have structural issues.
Neenan, who had already turned the company over to employees in 2001 and had just written “No Excuses: Take Responsibility for Your Own Success,” acknowledged mistakes were made. As chairman, he took responsibility for what he called the company’s “shortcomings.” The company moved quickly to fix the issues and put the situation behind them.
He wrote a note to staff: “It is immoral not to take responsibility for your actions — or to ask another to fulfill your responsibilities,” Neenan told the Coloradoan in 2012.
In 2016, the company celebrated its 50th year in business by moving into newly renovated offices in southeast Fort Collins.
Among its list of credits in Northern Colorado is the Budweiser Events Center, New Belgium Brewery, Fort Collins Police Services building on Timberline Road, Washington’s music venue, YMCA of the Rockies, the Music District, CSU’s Powerhouse Energy Campus, The Mitchell Block housing Bohemian Cos. and Foundation, the Fort Collins Senior Center expansion and countless others.
In 1990, Neenan was named Entrepreneur of the Year. Five years later the company was named Colorado Business of Year, and in 2013 the company received an American Business Ethics Award for the way it handled the schools crisis. Habitat for Humanity presented the company with its Hometown Hero award in 2022 for its longtime partnership and for demonstrating “compassion, leadership and willingness to engage” with the nonprofit’s mission.
Neenan led Habitat’s development of the Harmony Cottages neighborhood, delivering 48 buildable lots for the project. And the company, along with Elder Construction and Brinkman Construction, raised $100,000 to sponsor the cost of building a new home for a Fort Collins family.
Along the way it began a softball tournament benefiting the American Cancer Society, a cardboard boat race for Respite Care and its garage games for employees.
Fort Collins developer Stu MacMillan, who began his career at Neenan in 1980 when the company was still young, said he “felt like an entrepreneur in a growing company with a really bright leader. David was definitely a leader. We were really doing things differently. David was always creative. He took pride in being an innovator and finding new ways to do things.”
At the same time, Neenan made the company “a very human place to work,” MacMillan said. “There was a place for emotion in the business with him and knowing your true emotion.”
Former Fort Collins City Manager Darin Atteberry said Neenan “was an amazing leader” and that his death is a “huge loss to Northern Colorado.”
Tributes poured in on the company’s Facebook page, with friends, employees and past employees remembering Neenan’s vision, kindness, sense of humor and ethics.
“His care for those around him, the community and his ethics are just a few things that are the core values he shared with all of us.”
Another posted, “He searched for the humanity in everyone, from any walk of life. He was rewarded with many rich, meaningful relationships.”
Bill Warren, whose company National Inspection Services worked with Neenan on dozens of projects around the country, called him a “visionary who built a remarkable company by empowering people and leading with class. He’ll be missed for the ways in which he turned his passions into productivity and how he created so many opportunities for so many people.”
Credit:Source link
