Barry Swenson’s extraordinary vision and “special genius” for deal-making helped transform San Jose’s skyline and rebuild downtown Santa Cruz after the devastating 1989 earthquake when most developers were walking away.
“Nobody did it like Barry Swenson, ever,” said Mark Ritchie of Ritchie Commercial real estate. “No one had a broader influence on such diverse things — construction, management, development, ownership, and every category, office, retail, industrial. It’s just incredible.”
Swenson, who survived a major stroke nearly a decade ago as well as a small plane crash on his way back from his family ranch on the east side of Mt. Hamilton years before that, died Saturday at the age of 85.
The blue “Swenson” banners suspended from cyclone fences on commercial construction projects are ubiquitous around the Bay Area. And in the Santa Cruz retail area once devastated by the Loma Prieta earthquake, Swenson’s name still shines on brass plates mounted by the City Council listing the names of those responsible for its recovery.
“There are plaques with Barry Swenson’s name on them all the way up and down Pacific Avenue and side streets,” said Mike Rotkin, the mayor of Santa Cruz in the years after the earthquake. “He was willing to put his money where his mouth was. If you didn’t have people like Barry Swenson, we’d probably still be facing a devastated downtown — and I think that’s a fair statement.”
As part of the Santa Cruz restoration, the company rebuilt the Palomar Hotel and later the Dream Inn.
“There’s not a lot of love for developers generally in Santa Cruz,” Rotkin said, and Swenson had a “mixed relationship” with unions.
But when he restored the historic La Bahia Hotel along the coast, “he was willing to go up to almost 90% union labor on the project if they were willing to support the project,” Rotkin said. “I’ve been a union activist all my life and Barry was, I thought, more reasonable than the unions on that particular issue, because he really was somebody who wanted to get the job done.”
The San Jose company known simply as “Swenson” was founded over a century ago by his grandfather Carl N. Swenson, who built the historic De Anza Hotel on Santa Clara Street in San Jose in 1931. Decades later, after working for his father, Cliff Swenson, Barry Swenson restored it.
Over the years, he turned what had been a reputable general contracting company into an award-winning design-build development company. It is now run by Barry’s son, Case Swenson, who marks the fourth-generation Swenson to run the company.
In the 1950s and ’60s, as downtown emptied for the suburbs, Swenson’s company was there to build the now-shuttered former City Hall a half mile north of downtown on N. First Street, and later the former Mercury News headquarters off Brokaw Road, since replaced by a technology company.
But Swenson’s headquarters remained downtown — and still maintains its offices at 777 N. First Street. The company acquired numerous buildings on the east of First Street, and redeveloped them over the years.
Former San Jose Mayor Tom McEnery worked with Swenson to build San Pedro Square into a dining and entertainment venue, and said Swenson was a stalwart believer in the city’s downtown, where a new City Hall later returned in 2005 and the Mercury News followed in 2016.
“He and his dad always had a lot of confidence in downtown San Jose and believe me, there were not a large number of people who continued to invest their own money in downtown,” said McEnery, whose family also stretches back generations in San Jose.
Chuck Toeniskoetter, who worked with Swenson in the 1970s before starting his own development company, admired how he grew the family business into a real estate development empire.
“He was there to do good deals and do interesting deals,” Toeniskoetter said. “He loved negotiating, he loved working with clients. I learned more from him than I can tell you in those days. He was the master.”
Swenson amassed a vast empire of land holdings from New Zealand to Alturas in Northern California, including his beloved family ranch in the Isabel Valley in the far reaches of Santa Clara County where he had the primary bedroom designed so he could roll his bed out a sliding glass door onto a deck so he could sleep under the stars. He invited his employees and their families for annual fishing derbies, often offering them trips in small private planes instead of driving for nearly two hours.
Several decades ago, however, on a freezing morning, Swenson and good friend and pilot Don Huntley took off in Huntley’s single-engine plane on the ranch’s private airstrip close to the ranch house. Swenson had poured hot tea on the windshield to defrost it, Huntley said, but it froze over once the plane began to take flight.
“I couldn’t see where I was going,” Huntley, 77, said, “so I opted to ditch the plane because I didn’t want to go over rough country with poor visibility.”
They crash landed quickly and close to the runway, he said, and along with a third passenger, they “got beat up a little bit.” Swenson injured his back and staggered back to the ranch house to call his son for a helicopter rescue. “It was not an easy walk,” Huntley said, “It took him a while to heal up.”
They remained close friends for the rest of Swenson’s life — what might have been another 30 years, Huntley said, and they continued to fly together to Mexico and beyond.
“He was a great guy and he played fair,” Huntley said.
Bob Staedler, who met Swenson when he worked at the San Jose Redevelopment Agency in the 1990s, said the ranch way of life permeated Swenson’s persona back in San Jose.
“He had the cowboy hat. He had the swagger. He had the ‘aw shucks,'” Staedler said. “He was just such a great business person.”
McEnery said that like all old-time San Jose families, the Swenson company suffered ups and downs with the construction economy.
“It wasn’t just one wonderful ride to prosperity,” McEnery said, “Things were tough in San Jose. But the message in that family is, they got knocked around, but they never gave up, and they put their businesses back together.”
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