Arizona’s Timeless Magazine $5.99 Mar-Apr 2018
Serving Contracting Firms and the Arizona Community. . .
"School's out for summer, School's out forever"
R.I.P. Osborn School, 1879-1963
«Going Underground with Phil Berger «Cigar Sign Illuminates Whiskey Row Murder «Canyon State Electric celebrates 40 years
«Crawling Up the White Tank Mountains «A “Grand” O.S. Stapley Building Reborn «Attorneys to Fill Madison Street Jail
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Arizona contractor & Community
Gila River Health Care (GRHC) wants to announce the upcoming release of a request for proposals (RFP) for services including design and construction of a new Behavioral Health Services (BHS) office building on the Hu Hu Kam Memorial Hospital campus in Sacaton, AZ, and the renovation of the existing BHS office building. The modified scope of work includes an evaluation of the existing FF&E located in BHS buildings for possible re-use in the project, along with the selection, specifications, procurement coordination, and installation of the new and reused FF&E items for both the new and existing buildings. Estimated construction cost is $8.8M.
Publisher William Horner Billy@arizcc.com
Biscuit s
+ Gravy
An additional RFP will be released for the HUD III project, a renovation and expansion of the Hu Hu Kam Memorial Hospital, including a two story addition. Total estimated cost (all inclusive) is $25M. GRHC has budgeted $13-15M per fiscal year for the next five years, including FY18. GRHC invites the construction community to watch our web site http://grhc.org/about/how-to-do-business-with-grhc/ for upcoming announcements. Alternatively, please send a note to Contracts@grhc.org to get on our bidders mailing list and get notified about RFP releases.
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Editor Douglas Towne Douglas@arizcc.com Contributing Writers Jim Bolek Rachel Getting Christia Gibbons Tom Gibbons Nichole L. Reber Luke Snell Doug Sydnor Ross Vroman Production Manager Laura Horner Laura@arizcc.com
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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, and 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 © 2018 All rights reserved.
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Mar-Apr 2018
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For Information Contact: Brad Cable (602) 415-0449 • Cell (602) 763-8039 Email: bradc@rec-reuter.com
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Tom Gibbons
Douglas B. Sydnor
Article on page 16
Article on page 52
I have been working in the newspaper game on and off since 1973. Looks like I haven't gotten very far -- basically across the street. My first job was taking high school scores over the phone at the old Phoenix Gazette at 120 East Van Buren St. Now I spend three or four nights a week at 200 East. Van Buren St. writing headlines and photo captions for sports sections of newspapers around the country. I've been freelancing for about 10 years. Before that I was a columnist and business editor for the East Valley Tribune, back when it was a Pulitzer Prize-winning daily newspaper. I did a couple stints in sports there, too. I also served a couple tours of duty in the sports department of the Arizona Republic, was assistant sports editor at the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson and found time to work for some newspapers in California. I taught part-time at ASU's Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communications for 10 years. My family moved to the Valley in 1968, so I have had a front-row seat to watch as the Phoenix area has grown. When we arrived here, the Suns hadn’t played their first game, the world’s largest cattle feed lot was located next to Sky Harbor Airport and there were a lot of fields between all these towns. Editor's Note: Baseball fan Tom Gibbons is shown posing with Bob Ueuker's "The Last Row" statue at Miller Park in Milwaukee.
Douglas B. Sydnor, FAIA, grew up in Phoenix as the son of a respected architect. Knowing that he would be an architect at an early age, he sold construction materials at Entz-White Lumber Company, did construction labor for Kitchell Contractors and M.M. Sundt, and was a draftsman at Varney Sexton Sydnor Architects. He received a Bachelor of Architecture Degree at Arizona State University and a Masters in Architecture from Harvard University. Doug has been practicing architecture exclusively in Arizona for the past 40 years and received his AIA Fellowship in 2011. He has completed approximately 225 projects and studies, and his portfolio includes health care, higher educational, cultural, commercial, religious, hospitality, and residential commissions. He’s been honored with more than 60 professional design awards. He has lectured widely, exhibited his work, and about 250 articles have featured his architecture and civic involvement. Doug has authored three books including Scottsdale Architecture (2010), Plugger: The Architecture of Reginald Sydnor (2011), and Paradise Valley Architecture (2013). He’s written more than 35 articles for the Scottsdale Republic and as the architectural columnist for Arizona Contractor & Community magazine. He is active with his Scottsdale-based firm Douglas Sydnor Architect and Associates, Inc., which was founded in 1993. He enjoys painting, revegetating his desert property, and traveling.
Mar-Apr 2018
Volume 7 Issue 2
CONTENTS 10. 13. 30. 32. 39. 44. 46. 50. 52. 56. 58. ROC 233308
61. 62.
From The Editor: Crawling up the White Tank Mountains Douglas Towne Construction Around Arizona: Projects • People • Practices Back When: Acrobat Duo - Douglas Towne A “Grand” Building Reborn: O.S. Stapley Hardware Douglas Towne Brightening the Valley for 40 Years: Canyon State Electric Company Six-Way Confusion: Improving Grand Avenue’s Intersections - Douglas Towne Born Of Fire: The Bad Blood of a Cigar Sign Jim Bolek Subterranean Insights: Going Underground with Phil Berger - Douglas Towne Architect’s Perspective: Dental Offices Doug Sydnor, FAIA Building on the Past: 1963: Osborn School No. 1 Demolition Digging Through the Archives: New Machines Drive Hagen Construction - William Horner Bid Results - Bidjudge ACC Advertisers’ Index
We Rent Fences!! Front Cover Bucyrus Erie wrecking ball crane demolishes the Osborn School, 1963. Lyrics from "School's Out" by Alice Cooper, 1972. Image courtesy of Arizona Contractor & Community
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F
ollowing the post-World War II housing boom, there was an increased demand for high-quality dental care in the Phoenix area. Over the years such services
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Images courtesy of Author
Editor’s Column: Crawling Up the White Tank Mountains Douglas Towne
T
he White Tank Mountains form the western boundary of the Valley of the Sun. Oddly, the site of its namesake feature is a mystery. The natural tank that was an important water source for early settlers was filled in by the collapse of a cliff from heavy rains around 1900. The depression’s exact location is no longer known.
ten
The mountain range, however, has a unique feature that is seen by numerous motorists driving along Interstate 10. There is a prominent scar on the range’s southeast face. The mark is a road that seems to defy gravity, going seemingly straight up the mountain, ignoring any engineer’s attempt at safety.
There’s a reason for this. The road was constructed as part of Caterpillar Tractor Company’s proving ground to test its new construction machines in the Arizona desert. The Caterpillar Tractor Company was formed by the merger of the Holt Manufacturing Company and the C. L. Best Tractor Company in 1925. The new company was headquartered in San Leandro, California until it moved to Peoria, Illinois in 1930. The company grew Top: White Tank Mountain Regional Park. Below: The first D9 Caterpillar and the crew that built it. Left: Proving ground employee Jake Norton on a Caterpillar machine.
Mar-Apr 2018
Images courtesy of Empire Machinery
to become the world’s largest maker of construction equipment. Caterpillar opened their proving ground in Arizona in 1944 during World War II. The company leased 8,800 acres of State Trust lands and later purchased the property. The proving ground was located 25 miles west of downtown Phoenix, on property that stretched roughly from McDowell Road to Northern Avenue along the east slope of the White Tank Mountains, seven miles north of downtown Buckeye. The location was selected to test the company’s machinery against the heat, dust, and rock of the desert. The original test crew consisted of a dozen men and a few pieces of equipment. The tests produced more efficient, safe, and comfortable construction machines. By 1957, the Caterpillar proving ground’s workforce had expanded to 67 employees, most of whom had experience operating heavy equipment on construction jobs. Pushing construction equipment to its limits would seem to be a hazardous job; some employees felt otherwise. “As far as danger is concerned, I don’t consider tractor-driving nearly as nerve-wracking as fighting city traffic in a passenger car,” Jake Norton, a veteran foreman-driver at the proving ground, told the Arizona Republic in 1957. Still, the article noted that some maneuvers at the test site appeared to be an invitation for accidents, including a road up a mountainside that climbs a 50 percent grade. Large earth movers created the cut in the mountain that is still visible today, from miles away. Caterpillar also maintained a testing facility in Illinois, which provided the “wet, cold and mud” to test their equipment, as opposed to the “dust, heat and rock" that was in large supply at the Arizona proving ground. In 1990, Caterpillar moved the proving ground and its associated marketing center to 6,240 acres west of Green Valley, south of Tucson. The property, located on the southern border of the Freeport-McMoRan Sierrita Mine, is a combination of private and leased State land. The new site, known as the Tucson proving ground, is secluded to protect development of new
equipment and to eliminate complaints from nearby residents. The Tucson proving ground shares the property with the Tinaja Hills Demonstration and Learning Center, part of Caterpillar’s Customer Services Support Division. The two facilities support and enhance each other, and employ about 60 workers. Together, they host more than 12,000 visitors a year for machine demonstrations, customer/dealer programs, and equipment training courses. The facility features state of the art conference auditoriums, classrooms, and service training bays. The facility’s year-round weather conditions, variety of slopes and grades, and soil conditions ranging from sand and clay to hard rock make this an ideal location to
The mark is a road that seems to defy gravity, going seemingly straight up the mountain
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test and demonstrate Caterpillar machines to potential buyers from all over the world. In 1997, Caterpillar partnered with a developer, DMB Associates, to convert its former 8,800-acre proving grounds into Verrado, an upscale residential development. Most of the terrain was pristine desert land; only about 20 percent of the land bore scars from decades of equipment testing. But that steep, scary-looking road scar is still visible above Verrado. Today, it’s only used to access the antennae that perch atop Barry Goldwater Peak, the White Tank’s highest point at 4,082 feet. This prominent road cut is a reminder of Caterpillar’s presence in Arizona, seven decades later. Top: Caterpillar equipment being tested at the proving ground in the White Tank Mountains. Right: A Caterpillar D7E bulldozer at the Tucson proving grounds.
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Projects Construction Around Arizona
Construction Around Arizona
Image courtesy of DLR Group
Projects ∙ People ∙ Practices
Shackled to the Office: The Adaptive Reuse of Madison Street Jail Nichole L. Reber
M
ost of us feel shackled to our workplace. But what if your office was located in a prison? Fortunately the new tenant moving into Phoenix’s old Madison Street Jail is already accustomed to detention facilities. The former jail is being converted into the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office by the DLR Group. The project will consolidate employees who’ve been spread throughout the metropolitan area in various
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rented spaces. The new 263,595 square feet of finished space will also grant attorney’s office employees secure access to the court facilities next door. The Madison Street Jail was built in 1985 to house 700 inmates. The facility was decommissioned when its resident population more than doubled beyond capacity, and the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing infrastructure failed in 2005. The building was vacant until the adaptive reuse project began in late 2017. Upon completion in late 2019 or early 2020, the office is expected to house 935 county attorneys and staff. While some parts of the facilities at 225 West Madison were demolished in December 2017, adapting the remaining building to a new purpose is a sustainable
move. Complete demolition alone would have cost nearly $10 million. The new manifestation is estimated to cost between $60 million and $65 million. This adaptive reuse project marks a twist for the Omaha, NE-based DLR Group, an integrated design firm which is better known for designing prisons rather than repurposing them. Their work includes the Maricopa County Lower Buckeye Jail completed in 2004. Repurposing buildings instead of tearing them down is a sustainable move for the community and environment. “The economic driver is the benefit of consolidating leased office space into a county-owned facility adjacent to the Maricopa County Courts Complex. Creating energy-efficient office space with inherent
Arizona contractor & Community