Palmer builder working on a plan

PALMER -- You can't hold a conversation with 31-year-old Mike Thompson without his cell phone ringing. He takes each call, answering with a curt "Hullo." He listens, eyes narrowing as he dispatches instructions and clicks off the phone.

No matter where he is, what he's doing, the Palmer man is likely thinking about work. As owner and general contractor of WM Construction, Thompson is getting attention in Southcentral Alaska for the construction of his custom homes around the Valley. He's won several Mat-Su Home Builders' awards and is enjoying his busiest winter since starting his company two years ago.

"I think it's a great place to build here in the Valley," Thompson said. It's an easy commute to Anchorage. The market is good, and land is available. And it's a nice place to raise a family, he said.

Thompson should know. He was born in Anchorage and spent most of his childhood in the Palmer area. A typical high school student, he went to Palmer High, played Moose football, and worked nights and weekends bagging groceries at Carrs. What time he had left, he spent with his high school sweetheart, Wendy Fassett.

"I was probably about 19 and figured I had to do something with my life," Thompson said. He remembered being impressed as a teen when he heard how much a framer working on his mother's house made.

"Six-thousand dollars seemed like so much money. I thought 'Now that might be something I could do for a living,'" he said.

Thompson's grandfather, a builder himself, also pointed him toward carpentry. His mom lived in Washington state and looked at different trade schools for him. They found a carpenters' apprenticeship program near Seattle, and he spent the next four years working toward his journeyman's card.

"Then I came back up to help my grandpa frame up a house and never went back," he said.

He joined a framing crew and worked under a subcontractor framing for local builder Rex Turner. When his boss decided to move on, Thompson, then 23, jumped at the opportunity to run his own framing crew.

About that same time, he reunited with Wendy, his high school flame, and the couple married. Over the next few years, their family grew to include son, Cole, and daughter, Mikayla. And Thompson thought more about building his own homes.

"I don't want to ever stop moving forward. If I'm a framer, then why not be a general contractor? If I'm a contractor, then what about a land developer?" he asked.

A little less than three years ago, Thompson got his general contractor's license and started running the show, building his own houses. A couple years and some 25 homes later, WM Construction employs five employees and keeps several subcontractors busy year-round. The progression was incremental, so Thompson never felt like he was getting too big, too fast.

"And the bank keeps good tabs on you when you first start out," he said.

But Thompson said customers haven't seemed too skeptical just because he's a young builder. During home shows, people occasionally were surprised to learn the young guy in the baseball cap was the contractor, but then Thompson didn't really advertise that he was only 28.

"I don't know a lot of builders my age but then maybe I just don't know them," he said.

And he thinks people like his homes because of his attention to detail and ability to cater to the buyers and what they want. He isn't building the same model with each new job and gets to use his imagination to add special touches inside.

While Thompson enjoys off-work activities like hunting, fishing and snowmachining, he is always ready to talk about the work of building houses. His family endures long drives around the Valley looking at new neighborhoods and new construction and checking his job sites. And more than one vacation has been to national builders' conferences Outside. But he enjoys what he does, he said.

"I like to create things. And in this work, you're in charge of things, but it's definitely a team effort," he said. "I'm going to be here in the Valley for a long time to come. I'd like to keep building for as long as possible, while the market's good and the Valley is growing."