Public Service Is Hani Shafai’s Guiding Principle for Life and Business
By: Michelle Pawelski
Photos: Bailey Sadowsky
Hani Shafai’s first taste of the open spaces of South Dakota came in 1981 at age 19, driving from Denver to his new home in Rapid City.
Born and raised in Beit Lahia, a community on the northern tip of the Gaza Strip near the Israeli border, Hani knew nothing of the Great Plains state or its people.
But even as a teen in a foreign land, Hani saw potential.
Decades later, Hani has been integral in shaping the landscape of not only Rapid City but South Dakota, turning the potential he saw as a teen into the building of communities focused on improving the lives of their people.
“I just love public service,” Hani said. “Once you are a public servant, you are a public servant forever.”
Hani’s focus on serving his community started as a child. His father worked as a teacher; his mother was a farmer who raised chickens, goats and cows. As one of 11 children, Hani helped however he could. With the decades-long ebbs and flows of political upheaval in Palestine, Hani’s family was a constant – sharing food and giving shelter to displaced families and friends.
That foundation is something Hani carried with him after moving from his homeland to attend South Dakota Mines and became his guiding principle when founding Dream Design International. “There are a lot of needs in a community, regardless of whether it is infrastructure, social or economic issues. You start thinking, ‘How can I really be part of that. How can I provide solutions?’”
That question has guided every major decision in his life. Every apartment building, industrial park, health care facility or commercial center begins not with a financial model, but with people.
Hani’s path from Palestine to the Black Hills is a testament to how a single connection can change the course of a life. After high school, Hani attended Birzeit University in the West Bank, pursuing a degree in engineering.
When political strife closed the university, Hill City native and Hani’s calculus professor, Jack Anderson, suggested that he continue his education in South Dakota – nearly 7,000 miles from his family.
“I had no clue where South Dakota was,” Hani said. “As a young kid, I had anxiety being away from my family and friends and not knowing anyone except for my professor and his family.”
Despite the loneliness, Hani knew the benefit of the opportunity he had been given. He completed both his undergraduate and graduate degrees in civil engineering from South Dakota Mines, earning money by driving a cab in Chicago during holiday breaks and the summer. He worked briefly in California before returning to Rapid City to teach at the university.
“I always liked Rapid City, but as a young person the opportunities were limited,” Hani said. “But when I came back to start teaching and doing some consulting at the same time, I started to find my community. You don’t have to be in a big city to really create a future or have a good career.”
After several years of teaching and working as an engineer for the City of Rapid City, Hani decided to branch out on his own, founding Dream Design International in 1999 with one employee, Renee Catron, who remains on his team today. Hani began in a home office, giving him the chance to help his wife, Barb, with their young twins, Sharaf and Yasmeen. That arrangement was short-lived, as Barb suggested her well-meaning husband take his mounds of paper to another location.
Hani and Renee rented a small room that snugly fit two desks. However, Dream Design and Hani’s reputation quickly grew, as did the need for more employees and space. Dream Design began as an engineering firm, but it quickly evolved into a full-service development company, expanding its expertise to include land development, property management and construction.
One of Hani’s first major projects was a 152-apartment complex in Rapid Valley, near Ellsworth Air Force Base. At the time, the base was on the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) list. Hani, however, saw the potential. “I knew it was a great place,” he said. “We constructed it ourselves and decided to do the property management and leasing ourselves. We could not build them fast enough. It was a great experience.”
Since then, Hani has built a portfolio that has helped shape communities across the region. His work includes the transformation of the former Kmart shopping center on East North Street into a fully occupied retail destination, working with the city on infrastructure for the Fifth Street extension and Red Rock Estates, health care facilities, and two state One-Stop office complexes – a 100,000-square-foot facility in Rapid City and a recently completed, nearly 300,000-square-foot office complex at Dawley Farm Village in Sioux Falls, the firm’s largest project. Dream Design is also leading the redevelopment of the former Albertson’s building along Omaha Street, which includes Jersey Mike’s and Natural Grocers.
When Hani recognized that Rapid City was lagging other areas in wages and diversity of job opportunities, he bought over 700 acres to create the Black Hills Industrial Center, an industrial center designed for light- to heavy-manufacturing.
“We are always trying to fill a gap or help other people fill in the gap,” Hani said.
For Hani, it’s difficult to pick one project that stands out to him. They all served a purpose in improving the community – revitalizing a blighted area, adding more affordable homes, expanding access to health care or developing spaces where future generations can build careers. But one that is close to his heart is the Rocker Square student housing at his alma mater.
“It was for the school I went to; we cleaned up a place that was drug and alcohol infested with boarded up buildings, and we built it in record time,” he said.
It is also where his story in the United States began.
More than four decades after arriving in Rapid City, Hani has touched nearly every sector of the community.
His community.
One that he takes pride in calling home.
And one that he is improving one project at a time.
Origional story from the August Edition of Elevate Magazine
