Community Profile: Williston, ND

After suffering through past energy booms and busts, leaders and business people in the extreme northwestern North Dakota community of Williston remain cautiously optimistic. They believe that this time around the community is in for sustained economic growth.

The Williston area was blessed with some of the nation’s richest crude oil and natural gas deposits. But the blessing has also made the local economy susceptible to the volatile swings of worldwide energy markets.

Local leaders are carefully planning ways to exploit not only traditional energy resources, but are also working to diversify revenue streams through value-added agriculture, tourism and renewable energy projects. Taking a page from other western energy towns like Gillette, WY, Williston leaders are taking the opportunity to enhance the community’s quality of living and make it more desirable to young families.

“We’ve worked hard to diversify our economy,” says Ward Koeser, the city’s mayor, the president of the Williston City Commission and the owner of Kotana Communications. “We want our town to be so attractive that people will want to stay no matter what happens with energy. So far, it seems to be working, with more young North Dakotans coming back along with other young families from states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Colorado and Utah. One group of young people calls itself the ‘Community Builders’ and they are actively raising money to build the best playground in the state. We’re also planning bicycle trails and other amenities.”

OIL-FUELED GROWTH

Koeser, who arrived at the beginning of an energy boom in 1978, settled into a mobile home he hauled over from Terry, MT. At the time, no trailer parks existed in the city. Now, three trailer parks are operating at 100 percent occupancy and another has been established and is already half full. Two of the parks had sat empty for nearly 25 years before the community’s recent oil-fueled growth spurt.

“These trailer parks are the fastest way to meet the needs of construction workers and energy employees,” says Brad Bekkedahl, a local dentist who has served on the city commission for nearly 14 years. “But, at the same time, we’re adding to the infrastructure for additional long-term housing and industrial needs with a new library, fire station, law enforcement center, airport terminal, ice hockey arena and a $30 million water treatment plant — the first in North Dakota to use ultraviolet processing.”

The efforts appear to be paying off with Williston’s unemployment rate one of the lowest in a state that has been leading the nation in low unemployment rates for several years. Despite only being the ninth-largest city in North Dakota with an estimated 14,000 residents, Williston had the state’s fourth-largest taxable sales in the fourth quarter of 2008. Much of those taxable sales came from drilling rigs rushing to meet the demand for oil that has slowed with the global recession, but is now gaining momentum again.

“We’ve been thrust into a different role recently … looking for people, not jobs,” says Tom Rolfstad, executive director of the Williston Area Economic Development Partnership. “Housing becomes an issue, as does quality of life. Diversifying our retail base makes sense for us as well as diversifying the economy. One of our toughest issues is getting entrepreneurs involved with the creation of new businesses, but we’re working on that.”

While the community doesn’t have the population base to attract all the franchise retail outlets they would like, city leaders believe they will gradually close that gap as they climb from a population of about 12,500 in the 2000 U.S. Census to an expected 14,000 in the 2010 Census and continue growing into the future. Diane Hagen, executive director of the Williston Area Chamber of Commerce, says part of her job is to make sure oil field workers who have been in the area at least six months will be counted in the next census.

“It’s a challenge, given the amount of territory we cover and the migratory nature of these workers,” admits Hagen, a Williston native who has headed the chamber of commerce for nine years, helping its membership grow to about 450. “We’re also working with health care units in preparation for possible pandemics, conducting a youth program introducing elementary kids to business, welcoming over 350 teachers and staff back to school, partnering with Sidney (MT) through the Mon-Dak Agriculture Alliance and the North Dakota State University research station and preparing for a longer period of sustained growth. I think the cycle is going to stabilize this time and it won’t be the craziness like before.”

There are hopes that Williston might avoid that craziness this time around, with more than 20 major oil-bearing formations under the soil, including the monster Bakken Formation — the largest formation ever identified in the lower 48 states — and the recently-discovered Three Forks-Sanish and Red River Formations.

The recovery costs in the four counties near Williston are lower than other locations in the region, which bodes well for continued drilling activity. Oil companies are also making more long-term investments in private mineral rights leases as well as their own operations. Halliburton, one of the city’s largest private employers, recently broke ground on a $15-20 million facility on a 30.8-acre site in the city’s Rail Industrial Park.

ECONOMIC DIVERSIFICATION

Supplementing energy-related income is the community’s burgeoning agriculture industry, as irrigation becomes more the standard and ag processing and shipping facilities expand.

United Pulse Trading Inc., one of the world’s largest processors of pulse crops and a subsidiary of Saskatchewan-based Alliance Grain Traders Income Fund, recently built its first multi-million-dollar U.S. processing plant in Williston.

“That plant has essentially taken nearly a million acres out of summer fallow and helped to generate more peas and lentils for our agriculture base,” Koeser says. “In addition to serving the oil and ag industries through Williston State College, the school is also offering more information technology courses for future growth and more diversification as it approaches its 50th anniversary.”

Amy Krueger, the executive director of the Williston Convention and Visitors Bureau, has also been attempting to attract more visitors for a wider variety of attractions.

“We’ve had good success with local organizations attracting their state meetings to town,” Krueger says. “The strengths of the community include golfing at one of the top 100 golf courses in the country (The Links of North Dakota), fishing, hunting and history, with nearby Fort Buford, Fort Union and Missouri-Yellowstone Confluence Interpretive Center. Canada has been one of our best markets and we’ve done well with motorcycle enthusiasts on the way to and from Sturgis, SD.”

The popularity of the restored trading posts and forts attests to Williston’s history as a popular gathering point for commerce, a point not lost on current retail leaders like Kirk Schoepp and Matt Kramer, who are expanding their furniture store to accommodate the demand of young families and a number of new homes being built in the area.

“Williston has always been a hub, far into Montana, where some people will drive up to 200 miles for health care, dentistry, shopping, dining and entertainment,” says Schoepp, whose father in law, Joe Bertsch, was in the furniture business for 47 years and forged a relationship with the I. Keating Furniture World chain. “One of our sideline businesses during the oil boom has been to set up oil workers’ skid units (housing trailers) in three-hour increments. We often would get called out at midnight to remove the old, oil-stained and dirty furniture, clean the interior and replace the furniture in time for the next crews.”

Kramer, Schoepp’s associate, says the economic growth in western North Dakota has encouraged them to expand to Williston and other communities.

“It’s our goal to provide a nice shopping experience and high-quality goods,” says Kramer, who returned to his native Williston from the Twin Cities area in 1997 to purchase the I. Keating store in Minot with his family.

CONTINUED GROWTH

Fueling the continued growth of the surrounding region has also been the purpose of the Star Fund, which provides funding for investment in smaller community projects, including some in Montana. A one-cent sales tax has generated nearly $3 million a year, a source of matching dollars for state and federal infrastructure programs.

It’s that kind of foresight that has helped encourage Jeff Wagner, who came to Williston from Nebraska in 1989 to take charge of the Horizon Resources consolidated cooperative system, helping to grow it into a $250 million annual farm supply business.

“In addition to operating convenience stores and retail stores, we provide wholesale fuels and lubricants to the oil industry, as well as propane tanks and other supplies,” Wagner says. “We also built a new $7 million fertilizer plant and new grain loading facility. While most people know us for oil, this region is also the largest producer of the best-quality durum wheat in the world. It’s nice to be first in so many areas.”

But commission member Bekkedahl knows the city can’t rely on the cyclical nature of oil and agriculture alone.

“What young families want is more than just a good job,” he explains. “What they do after work is also very important to their quality of life and our current good times need to provide the means of achieving that good life well into the future.”