Three generations of Talcotts help build Great Falls

Brad Talcott wanted no part of working for the family construction business when he was finishing high school in the mid-1970s, so his father, James, sold the business.

After starting college at Montana State University and traveling for a year, the younger Talcott reconsidered.

“I realized I would be missing a great opportunity of working with my dad, a man who’d been such a successful contractor, developer and innovator,” he said.

Project combining restaurants, shops, hotels, housing underway

So James Talcott started up another construction business, James Talcott Construction, which Brad Talcott joined in 1976. After completing his construction engineering technology degree in Bozeman at MSU in 1979, Brad eventually assumed control of the company, with his older sister Diana working as office manager for 20 years. James Talcott kept an office, helped with smaller projects and offered advice until his death at 81 in 2005.

Brad Talcott is glad he joined his father and became part of a three-generation construction company that’s built a lot of residential, commercial and industrial buildings since 1927.

“We’re proud of the many facilities and relationships we’ve built in 89 years,” the James Talcott Construction website says. “And we look forward to continuing that tradition.”

The year 2016 has been one of the construction company’s busiest years, Brad Talcott said. He and his company’s 75-some employees have won contracts to build several major projects, including:

• Erecting the James Cameron Family Center in downtown Great Falls for the Rescue Mission.

• Building the Helena Chemical Plant at Great Falls AgriTech Park.

• Razing a hotel and building a full-block convenience store and fuel station on 10th Avenue South for Town Pump.

• Converting a large Montana Air National Guard airport hangar to be used by C-130 transport planes.

Rescue Mission gets $2 million for new family center

Town Pump moving dirt from one site to another on 10th

“The attitude in Great Falls is positive, leading to more growth and development, and our company has a lot of good project managers, supervisors and guys in the field,” Talcott said.

In addition to that contract work, Talcott, his business partner and wife, Linda Caricaburu, and two other business partners are pushing ahead this fall with the first buildings in their own visionary 12-acre West Bank Landing project near the Missouri River. When it’s completed in a few years, it’s expected to comprise an upscale hotel and six or seven other mixed-use buildings, which will combine retail businesses, office space and residential condominiums.

Talcott, 61, paused for an interview recently to recount anecdotes about how his grandfather, Burt Talcott, and father, James Talcott, launched and transformed the construction company over the years.

Born in South Dakota in 1887, Burt Talcott moved with brothers to Billings, where they worked a few years in a lumber yard.

Dempsey boxing arena

In 1923, Burt Talcott moved to Shelby for a few months, helping a lumber yard supply the boards to build a big outdoor sports arena so the oil boom town could host a world heavyweight championship bout between champion Jack Dempsey and challenger Tommy Gibbons.

Tiny Shelby’s staging of the big fight turned out to be a financial disaster for local backers, with ticket sales from poor attendance failing to cover financial guarantees paid to the boxers and other expenses.

Burt Talcott stayed around a few weeks to help dismantle boards that had been rented to build the temporary arena and return them to the lumber yard.

His son, James, was born in Shelby, but Burt and his family soon moved to Great Falls, where he worked in a lumber yard for four years.

By 1927, Burt left the lumber yard to form his own business building homes in Great Falls. His reputation grew as he built more houses. It was the beginning of the family’s three-generation commitment to the construction industry. The first construction business was called Burt Talcott Builders.

Pioneering tank construction

Burt Talcott kept working building homes and doing other construction work he could find during the Great Depression, when times were tough for everybody, his grandson said.

“Grampa Burt came from a hard-working, Methodist family,” Brad Talcott said. “He didn’t drink or swear. The family joke is that none of us had a glass of wine until his funeral in 1976. And we think he rolled over in his grave watching us.”

Burt Talcott’s son James and his brothers became journeyman carpenters with their father right out of high school.

James started civil engineering classes at what was then Montana State College just before World War II, but quit to enroll in the service and became an Army Air Corps bomber pilot. Following the war, he returned to Bozeman, received a degree in architectural engineering and joined his father’s construction business.

James Talcott expanded the business into commercial work, developing expertise in steel construction. He built many storage tanks, even inventing and patenting his own system for erecting them more efficiently and safely.

Talcott’s system of building the large storage tanks involved starting the work on the ground level and using hoists to lift sections of the tank off the ground, layer by layer, until they completed the bottom layer. That allowed workers to build the tank project while remaining on the ground. It was quicker and didn’t require construction employees to climb high scaffolding.

The method was so successful that Talcott traveled across the country building these tanks in some 28 states in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

James Talcott also fabricated the first steel doors to the Minuteman Missile silos and developed and built the Grande Vista housing development in southwestern Great Falls. He served on the board of the Deaconess Hospital when it acquired the land on 26th Street South for its new facility, before merging years later with Columbus Hospital to become Benefis Health System.

Brad Talcott led the company into multifamily, commercial and industrial construction.

Talcott and his construction company have won several awards, including historic preservation awards for converting the vacant Largent School into the Center for Mental Health and an environmental award for building the Apgar Transit Center in Glacier National Park.

Developing new projects

Like his father James, Brad Talcott enjoys putting projects together as a developer as well as constructing buildings for others.

“I learned by doing smaller projects first, working at all facets,” such as financing, design, architecture, cleanup and permits, he said. “You try to challenge yourself at the right time.”

Some highlights have included starting building projects in new locations, such as converting an industrial property on Machinery Row, Second Street and River Drive South, into professional offices for the Junkermier Clark Campanella Stevens accounting firm in the late 1990s and building the La Quinta Inns & Suites (originally built as a Hawthorn Suites) on the east bank of the Missouri River in 1999-2000.

In late 1999, Talcott moved his own James Talcott company office and construction yard from the west side of the Missouri River to North Park Industrial Park on the far east side of Great Falls, believing it’s better to concentrate noisy industrial companies in one place on the edge of town.

It was common in the 1800s and 1900s to build railways along low-lying rivers in many communities including Great Falls, attracting industrial plants that needed rail transportation, he said.

But most folks now realize the “highest and best use” for riverfront property is a blend that includes parkland, residential, office space and retail, Talcott said. He and his partners have strived, with private, community and government agency help, to join other cities in cleaning up aging industrial eye sores and converting them to a mixed use of clean businesses, offices and residences that take advantage of scenic rivers and parks.

He and Caricaburu began developing what they call the West Bank One addition about eight years ago in the location of their former construction company and its construction yard.

They opened StayBridge Suites, an extended stay hotel, in 2009, and a mixed-use building that includes the Front Brewing Co., Front Public House and Faster Basset restaurant and coffee house as well as Kobe Seafood and Steak over the next few years.

Talcott and Caricaburu said they recognized the opportunity to expand their mixed-use development to the north near the river as they were completing West Bank One, but realized they’d need additional partners and help from the federal, state, county and city governments with cleanup, financing and other aspects of the using the contaminated former industrial site.

They brought in partners Spencer Woith, a civil engineer experienced in designing redevelopment projects, and Joe Aline, a contractor who specializes in cleanup work.

Cascade County once used the land for public works and health department functions, but before that an oil refinery was located on the site, leaving a large swath of petroleum and other environmental contaminants. Cascade County oversaw partial cleanup of the site during its ownership, but further remediation was still needed when the partners bought the land from the county in 2015 for $2 million.

“It might have been one of the most complex redevelopment sites in Great Falls,” Talcott said, adding the project is well on its way now.

Confidence in Great Falls

Caricaburu said she and her husband, Brad, are excited about the future of Great Falls, including growing manufacturing, retail and residential growth. She said she’s used the research and writing skills she learned as a former journalist to provide support for construction projects, help obtain brewery licenses, set up a website and market Front Brewing’s beers.

She said she and her husband grew up in Great Falls, appreciated the good schools and as young adults experienced Great Falls’ tough times when Malmstrom Air Force Base lost a major mission in the late 1970s and the Anaconda Company refinery in Black Eagle closed in 1980.

“The community has gone through more than 30 years of rebuilding its confidence, and is on the move now,” said Talcott, a private pilot and chairman of the Great Falls Airport Authority.

The pair believe the community’s recent approval, by surprisingly big margins, of bond issues to rebuild Great Falls schools is a reflection of community optimism.

Talcott and Caricaburu believe there is a strong connection between public education and a thriving community, she said. Talcott has been chairman of the Great Falls College Montana State University Foundation for several years and Caricaburu is chairwoman of the Great Falls Public Schools Foundation.