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VOLUME 11 ISSUE 4
$5.99 July August 2022 Serving Contracting Firms and the Arizona Community. . . Then & Now
LORNE PRATT: ARIZONA’S HOLLYWOOD-CONNECTED DEVELOPER DONALD “D.C.” SPEER: TOP-NOTCH CONTRACTOR AND GRANDPA A RICH LEGACY OF PROJECTS AND EMPLOYEES: D.C. SPEER CONSTRUCTION ARIZONA’S MASTER-PLANNED COMMUNITIES OF THE 1970S DOUGLAS: ARIZONA’S FIRST PLANNED INDUSTRIAL COMMUNITY
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Subscriptions: Online at arizcc.com Serving Contracting Firms and the Arizona Community… Then & Now Arizona Contractor & Community (ACC) magazine is published bi-monthly (Jan/Feb, Mar/Apr, May/June, July/Aug, Sept/Oct, Nov/Dec). ACC is a professional publication designed for the contracting industry, engineers, architects, equipment rentals, suppliers, and others interested in Arizona and its history. Content including text, photographs or illustrations may not be reproduced without the written permission from the publisher. The publisher does not assume responsibility for unsolicited submissions. ACC reserves the right to reject any editorial and advertising material and reserves the right to edit all submitted content material. Arizona Contractor & Community Copyright © 2022 All rights reserved.
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Contributors - Elissa Arms & Maechen Stewart From The Editor: Douglas: Arizona’s “Planned” Industrial City - Douglas Towne Construction Around Arizona: Projects • People • Practices Back When - “Model” Stars at Maryvale Home Show Douglas Towne How an Old Bridge and an Artificial Geyser Created Two Arizona Communities: The Genius of Lorne Pratt Douglas Towne Lorne Pratt: Arizona’s Hollywood-Connected Developer Douglas Towne Donald “D.C.” Speer: Top-Notch Contractor and Grandpa Maechen Stewart D.C. Speer Construction: A Legacy of Successful Projects and Employees - Douglas Towne Arizona’s Second Wave of Master-Planned Communities: One Contractor’s Recollections - Bill Kelton Old School Equipment: Elevating Loaders Part 3 – P&H Elevating Loader - Billy Horner Building on the Past - 1960: KUPD and Interstate 17 Architect’s Perspective - DC Ranch Celebrates 25th Anniversary - Doug Sydnor, FAIA Digging Through the Archives: L.R. Contreras Contracting Co. - Billy Horner
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Front Cover Yuma-based Arrow Construction was among the many contractors involved in the excavation for the London Bridge, 1971. Article on page 48
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ELISSA ARMS ARTICLE ON PAGE 39
MAECHEN STEWART ARTICLE ON PAGE 60
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lissa Arms is a content writer at Raken, a cloud-based project management software solution built to connect the field to the office. She writes about issues that affect the construction industry, including safety and risk management. Her goal is to empower contractors with information by creating articles, eBooks, and how-to guides that help construction companies improve documentation, avoid disputes, and increase profitability. Raken, founded in 2014, has easy-to-use mobile and web features that provide a window into the job site. They help boost productivity and visibility with realtime data collection and documentation, which streamline daily reporting, time cards, production tracking, payroll, and safety management. With better project data, companies can make more informed business decisions. While Elissa has been with Raken since February 2022, she has worked for more than a decade as a professional writer working mainly in technology and healthcare. Since joining the Raken team, she has immersed herself in all things construction, learning directly from the company’s in-house industry experts. She especially enjoys translating complex technical concepts into easy-to-understand articles. Her favorite pieces include recent blogs tackling diversity and sustainability in construction. Elissa is proud to work in an industry that is consistently growing and improving. She hopes that her writing can help construction companies find ways to work more safely, efficiently, and effectively.
aechen Sanera Stewart is one of Don Speer’s eight granddaughters. She and her sisters, Liesl and Gretl, were raised by Don’s son, Bill Speer, when he married her mom, Vassie, in 1980. Growing up in the East Valley, she often vacationed in Sedona with her grandparents. While attending Northern Arizona University in the early 1990s, she recorded an extensive interview with Don. After college, she taught 5th and 6th grades in Mesa Public Schools. She married her husband, Jeff, in 2006, and in 2010, they relocated to Spokane, Washington. Their first child, Millie, was born in 2011, followed by Griffin in 2013. Maechen has remained at home while her husband frequently travels for his safety and environmental compliance work. They subsequently moved for two years to Findlay, Ohio, and in 2014, settled in Clemmons, North Carolina, when Jeff became vice president of safety with Ashley Furniture. Her kids are now 8 and 10. Griffin is proficient in Spanish after completing his third year in a Spanish Immersion program at the local elementary school. Millie will be a sixth-grader at the middle school in the fall. She loves all things nature, animals, toddlers, and babies. Maechen enjoys growing heirloom tomatoes, herbs, lettuces, hydrangeas, and peonies in a non-desert environment. She loves historical fiction novels and working out with a group of friends at a local boot camp facility. She loves talking about her beloved Gramps and was happy to share her memories of him in this unique opportunity.
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EDITOR’S COLUMN: DOUGLAS:
ARIZONA’S “PLANNED” INDUSTRIAL CITY
DOUGLAS TOWNE
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SIXTEEN
lar street grid in 1901. The site had many advantages, including plentiful flat terrain for industrial and residential development, along with adequate water supplies. The city would be the site for two new smelters, replacing outdated operations in Bisbee. The El Paso & Southwestern Railroad linked Douglas to nearby copper mines in Bisbee and two mines in Sonora, Mexico: Cananea and Nacozari. The railroad would also transport the smelted copper to El Paso, where another facility would further refine the metal. Within a decade, Douglas would produce an astounding 7 percent of the world’s copper. My first visit to the city was in 1985, a few years before the last remaining smelter ceased operations. Even then, Douglas appeared moribund, realizing the
likelihood of losing its major employer. Our expedition sympathized both with the city’s impending loss of its heritage and public health concerns about the smelter’s emissions, which included arsenic, lead, and sulfur dioxide. In the end, it was easier for the corporation to shut down the aging industrial facility than to adhere to regulations. But there were clues throughout the city as to its once-wealthy status as a model industrial town. Most prominent were the Top left: Pancho Villa at Battle of Agua Prieta, 1915. Above: Douglas welcome sign, 1996. Bottom left: Kim Eicker, Joe Davis, Patty Durant, Douglas Towne, and Bob Hendry at the Geronimo Surrender Monument, 1991. Below: Douglas Reduction Works smelter, 1940.
Image Courtesy of Library of Congress
D
ouglas is a city with an uncertain future but a fascinating past. Located along the Mexican border across from Agua Prieta, it’s a community that Pancho Villa threatened to attack during the Mexican Revolution in 1916, where Los Angeles evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson convalesced after being allegedly kidnapped in 1926, and where author Thornton Wilder retreated to write The Eighth Day, which won the National Book Award in 1968. Perhaps the most surprising element about Douglas is that it was a planned community, created on raw land by two Bisbee mining companies, the Copper Queen Consolidated, owned by Phelps Dodge, and the Calumet and Arizona. The community, named after Copper Queen President Dr. James Douglas, was plotted on a rectangu-
July August 2022
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Right: Side entrance to the Gadsden Hotel in Douglas, 1995. Top: Phelps Dodge Mercantile Co. sign in Douglas, 1985. Mid above: El Paso & Southwest Railroad Station in Douglas, 1995. Above: Cathy Weiler at Skeleton Canyon basecamp, 1985.
impressive historic buildings along G Avenue, especially the Spanish Colonial Revival-style Gadsden Hotel, completed in 1929. Further north was the Beaux-Arts influenced El Paso and Southwestern Railroad Passenger Depot, finished in 1913. Our trip to Douglas was but a mere stopover while en route to exploring Skeleton Canyon, located 30 miles northeast in the Peloncillo Mountains. Geronimo had surrendered there in 1886, and the canyon was a long-used backdoor to move to and arizcc.com
from Mexico undetected. Its placename was derived from the many animal and human bones left in its midst. We outfitted our excursion at the Phelps Dodge Mercantile Co. in Douglas, sensing correctly that this was a store not long for the world. Our subsequent drive into Skeleton Canyon was likely the only occurrence of a Mitsubishi Cordia gracing that location. Cognizant of the area’s violent reputation, for self-defense we wielded steak knives and a can of dog repellant that a postman had inadvertently dropped on his route. Both proved unnecessary, which was fortunate since the mace canister imploded while hiking. Another scintillating facet of Skeleton Canyon was a fabulous treasure purportedly buried there in 1881. Unfortunately,
subsequent research, including that conducted in a 1990 episode of Unsolved Mysteries, makes these claims dubious. Still, our meager knowledge at the time indicated there was hope for a bonanza. In the end, the camping journey promised history, danger, romance, and even riches. We managed to nail three out of four. As expected, Phelps Dodge shifted ore processing from Douglas to a facility in Playas, New Mexico, in 1987. The smelter closure, in turn, nudged the border town into a tailspin from which it has not ever wholly recovered. As a result, Douglas was recently ranked the poorest city in Arizona, with a 30 percent poverty rate. But it still retains impressive infrastructure just waiting to be adaptively reused by savvy artists or developers. Arizona Contractor & Community
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Projects . PEOPLE . PRACTICES
CONSTRUCTION AROUND ARIZONA Projects
CONSTRUCTION AROUND ARIZONA
MCCARTHY FINISHES $192 MILLION ASU SCIENCE AND TECH BUILDING AT A SITE WITH A RICH HISTORY
M
cCarthy Building Companies has completed construction on the latest addition to Arizona State University’s Tempe campus, the Interdisciplinary Science and Technology Building 7 (ISTB7), a five-story, 281,000-square-foot, high-performance research facility. The new building is home to the Rob and Melani Walton Center for Planetary Health, which promotes an interdisciplinary approach to knowledge generation to improve the earth’s health and sustainability of food, water, and energy. Designed and constructed as a collaborative research facility, scientists of varying disciplines work together in ISTB7 to address global challenges.
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Above: Construction of the ISTB7’s exterior skin. Right: Rachel Ceciliani Kirk leads an ISTB7 construction tour.
“As a gateway to the Tempe campus and being among the highest performing sustainable labs in Arizona, ISTB7 represents a legacy project for our team and partnership with ASU,” says Carlos Diaz, project director with McCarthy Building Companies’ Southwest Region Education Group. “By prioritizing collaboration, the ISTB7 team developed and implemented the best solutions on issues ranging from sustainability and historical preservation to budget and scheduling to complete and make this incredibly complex project a reality.” Located at a busy Tempe intersection on the southwest corner of University Drive and Rural Road, the building site has a remarkable archaeological history.
To respect and celebrate the site’s legacy, less than 50 percent of the building floor plate touches the ground where more than 1,000 years ago, Native Americans proArizona Contractor & Community