Monthly Archives: March 2010

During the third annual South Dakota Film Fest, of which I am a co-producer, Kevin Costner showed up. My wife Suzette is on the left, Amy and Kristi are on the right. Photo by Chad Coppess

Or rather, a community that gets into you. I’m not sure how it started, but once I moved back to Aberdeen I found it very easy to get involved with all sorts of volunteer efforts. When you come back to a town you left as kid for college, it’s not easy stepping into the business world.

Sometimes there’s resentment towards people who try to bring big city ideas to communities or boards. While the ideas are generally good, and spot on, tact must be maintained when attempting to offer tried and tested ideas. The best way I handled this was with patience, and by choosing what battles to get involved in (we never fight around here). You may have an original idea, sitting right there in the committee room, but because you have “out of town” experience, often ideas are not heard. Another thing you can do is just do your own thing if you’re passionate about how things should be in a community. Aberdeen is great for this. You can stick your neck out, take a risk and maybe get it shot off. Or, your idea just might stick and your image goes up a notch.

Looking back since 1995 here’s what I’ve done in Aberdeen to try to make this the best place it can be.

• Volunteered for many Chamber of Commerce events

• Co-coordinator of the Oz Festival for 7 years

• Started the Aberdeen Downtown Association with Council-woman Jennifer Slaight-Hansen and Jon Webb from Webb Shoes

• Started A-List magazine to cast a contagious aura of positivity around the town. (maintained it for only one fun year).

• Joined Preserve South Dakota to advocate for the preservation of South Dakota’s historic assets (8 years now)

• Served on the Brown County/Aberdeen Landmarks Historic Preservation Group

• Served on the Dacotah Prairie Museum Foundation for 6 years

• Currently serving on the Alexander Mitchell Library Foundation since 4 years ago.

• Co-Founded the South Dakota Film Festival with Tom Black (going on 4th annual)

• Started this Blog to encourage people to move back to Aberdeen

• Currently serve on the Aberdeen Downtown Association’s Design and Appearance committee; we’re assisting with a new streetscape project this year

• Member of the Bethlehem Lutheran Church and former council member for 3 years.

• Taught three semesters at Northern State University as an adjunct professor.

You can imagine that this sort of involvement affords one the chance to meet a lot of people. Yes, it takes a lot of time, but not really. And as I’ve said before, we have no children so my time is quite flexible. Plus, I really like to help the community where I can. My company has also helped dozens of non-profit organizations with all sorts of media-related and advertising assistance.

I’ve not even begun to tap the surface of all the areas you can get involved in. If you are new to town and have a particular interest, just let me know and I’ll see if I can get you connected.

— Troy McQuillen

Built in 2008 by Gese Construction, designed by Brad Ciavarella, this 2800 square foot home sits on the Moccasin Creek in northeast Aberdeen.

To address the needs of a growing community, several projects are in the works to add more housing to the community. Several large-scale apartment units are being built and new houses continue to pop up all over town. This house in the northeast corner of Aberdeen was designed by Mitchell, SD architect Brad Ciavarella of Ciavarella Design. General contracting was handled by the homeowners and the project experienced no major roadblocks during construction. This house was built in 2008 and was accomplished in 9 months. While there were substantial cost savings by generaling the home themselves, sole responsibility of the entire projects fell to the homeowners. The construction was handled, however, by reputable Aberdeen builder, Joe Gese of Gese Construction. As the primary builder, Joe assisted the homeowners with site management and sub contractor coordination. His expertise was invaluable, and his talent was masterful as he created a one-of-a-kind home in Aberdeen. This house sits on the Moccasin Creek and has had limited sump pump activity in the 13 months the owners have lived in it.

Why is this house featured on “I moved to Aberdeen?” Simply because this is our house. I was always the “old home restorer-type” but a beautiful lot on the creek caught my wife’s eye and we bought it thinking some day we’d build a new home on it. Some day came way quicker as we could not contain our enthusiasm. Needless to say,  we learned a lot about building a house without a general contractor. We asked so many questions and talked to so many people that we had everything lined up perfectly. People always ask us what we’d do differently. We can’t think of anything. I provided the architect with lots of reference photos of classic bungalows built around the early part of the last century. And I asked a lot of the builder, especially on the interior. We used all solid oak planking for trim and baseboard, which is really unheard of nowadays. But, we did our homework and determined it was cheaper to have solid oak boards milled and cut to size than standard off-the-shelf oak moldings. Who would have thought?

I can’t stress enough how living in this community has afforded us the things we dream about. In my line of work it probably would have been impossible for me to build a house like this in Los Angeles in my mid 40s; on the water, with .6 acres of land. Living in a relatively small town, the people know you, and reputations go a long way. Our mortgage banker was related to a client of ours, the builder was referred to us by a neighbor of my brother, and all the sub contractors seemed excited to be working on a house that was a little different than most.  In a small town like this, your reputation definitely does preceed you, and in our case, that was a great thing. My wife calls this our dream house. I call it the house for our 40s. — Troy McQuillen

Architectural details were difficult to engineer and build, but were well worth the effort.