Location: Kalispell, MT
Project Size: 242,000 SF
Completed: 2007

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Kalispell voters approved a $39.8 million bond on November 2, 2004, to build a second public high school and relieve chronic overcrowding at Flathead High, which had grown into the largest high school in Montana. The bond covered both a ground-up new campus and renovations to Flathead High's front entrance, commons, cafeteria, and gym, reorganizing the district's K-12 configuration in the process.

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Swank headed up construction of the new school. Schematic design wrapped in April 2005, ground broke the following month, and the finished campus — 242,664 square feet spread across 60 acres — was dedicated on August 11, 2007, with students starting classes that September 4. The project came in on schedule and under budget, opening with 906 students across freshman, sophomore, and junior classes as Glacier High School's first graduating class worked its way through.

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For the Swank team on site, the project carried a personal weight beyond the schedule and budget. As project manager Shawn Baker put it at the time, recalling conversations with his own young children: "I was building the school they were going to go to."

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