December 11, 2024

Dennis Buchanan dies at age 81

Photos courtesy of Terry Buchanan [enlarge]

In this 2014 photo, Dennis Buchanan is pictured with some of the Christmas trees he sold for two decades out of his former construction yard.

Terry Buchanan remembers watching his father's fingers fly over the keys of a ten-key, rapidly calculating figures as chief estimator and vice president at Wick Construction four decades ago.

“He just had this knack for construction estimation,” Terry Buchanan said of his father, Dennis. “He could tell you how much something was going to cost, and he would be right.”

Dennis Buchanan, founder of Bellevue's Buchanan General Contracting, died Nov. 12 at age 81. Buchanan was born Feb. 3, 1943 and grew up Seattle's Maple Leaf neighborhood between brothers Tim and Duncan. He graduated from Roosevelt High School in 1961, and started college at Washington State University, transferring to the University of Washington before earning his degree in Construction Management.

Buchanan started his construction career with Bechtel Corporation in San Francisco, where he'd moved to be with future wife, Jan Lund, who was working as an occupational therapist at San Francisco General. Back in the Seattle area where the couple married in 1969, Buchanan worked as a project manager and estimator at Howard S. Wright Construction before joining Wick Construction.

“When asked how he became an estimator, he remarked that everyone else was scared of the role, so he just took it on as a young guy in the office,” Terry Buchanan wrote in his father's obituary.

His father also had a strong entrepreneurial spirit, said Terry Buchanan, who's been president at Buchanan General Contracting since 2021 and worked at the company for most of his professional life. The company Dennis Buchanan founded 35 years ago worked over the years in commercial remodels, telecommunications sites, and came to specialize in affordable housing with a strong emphasis on renovation.

Buchanan General Contracting clients include PSE, Mercy Housing Northwest, Community Roots Housing, Low Income Housing Institute, Historic Seattle, Bechtel Corp, AT&T Wireless, Tacoma Housing Authority and the King County Housing Authority.

[enlarge]

Dennis Buchanan rides a horse in 2007 at his Durgan Ranch in Paulina, Oregon.

Terry Buchanan said his father could regularly be seen at the office giving advice and encouragement to subcontractors and others in the industry, one day lending a dumpster to a smaller sub, another day telling someone when their unit price seemed off.

“In ‘94, I started my own business, and Dennis was the reason I did,” said Steve Young, general manager of Wapato's Concord Construction, who met Buchanan when the two worked together at Howard S. Wright Construction. “He was very instrumental in getting me up and running.”

Young's and Buchanan's companies worked together on several joint ventures starting with school remodels in Connell and Wapato in the 1990s. Buchanan always had the unique ability to bring a project together, Young said.

“Dennis was very insightful in being able to read people, understanding what they wanted and what would help them,” Young said. “His capacity to remember and recall was phenomenal.”

Buchanan said his father's skill and knowledge would have allowed him to grow his company and take on bigger projects, but he made a deliberate choice not to. One of Dennis Buchanan's construction mottos was “big jobs, big headaches,” Terry Buchanan said.

“This is the company he wanted to have and the ... personal level of interaction he wanted to have with the customers, and anything bigger wouldn't have allowed that,” Terry Buchanan said.“It was about relationships, and being able to have the life balance that he wanted to have.”

Buchanan was also known throughout Bellevue for the Christmas trees he sold for two decades from the company's former construction yard off auto row on 116th Avenue Northeast. The project started around 1995 to help sell Jan's remaining inventory of ornaments after she closed a gift shop she had been running. The couple bought 65 trees from a friend with a property near Hood Canal, sold them in about a week, bought another 40 and sold them just as fast. Dennis Buchanan was hooked, his son said.

“My dad basically has this insatiable appetite for entrepreneurship and it grew to be about 1,000 trees a year,” Terry Buchanan said, adding that the sale of the Christmas trees financed the college educations of several family members and the children of a former Buchanan General Contracting superintendent who died young.

Dennis also gave financial and in-kind support to Yarrow Point, Bellevue and Rainier Vista Boys & Girls Clubs, and many other nonprofit organizations, Terry wrote in his father's obituary.

“In the end, Dennis would likely be most proud of how he supported the employees of Buchanan General Contracting.”

Dennis Buchanan died due to complications of Alzheimer's disease. He is survived by his brothers, Tim and Duncan, his children, Jeane and Terry, and daughter-in-law, Sonja, and his grandchildren, Brayden and Jakob. His wife of 55 years, Jan, died in October, also at age 81. A celebration of his life will be held at 4 p.m. on Saturday, April 12 at the Seattle Yacht Club.