VOLUME 9 ISSUE 1
$5.99 jan-feb 2020 Serving Contracting Firms and the Arizona Community. . . Then & Now
The salt river issue ◊ Joint Head Dam: The Forgotten “Salt” Water Diversion ◊ Leonard Monti’s Plan to Bring a roman Bridge to Tempe ◊ How Phoenix’s Canals Shape the Valley’s Past and Future ◊ U.S. Highway 87’s “Bridge of Pipes” over the Salt River
Arizona’s Timeless Magazine
◊ Mid-Century Experimental Architect: William Francis Cody
Phoenix’s Center Street Bridge:
Long and Long Gone
P R I N T | PA C K A G I N G | M A I L I N G | F U L F I L L M E N T E C O - F R I E N D LY S O L U T I O N S
Building a garage addition
Publisher William Horner billy@arizcc.com
Editor Douglas Towne douglas@arizcc.com Decorating my new house O 602 254 2427 F 602 258 1076 2 0 2 0 N 2 2 N D AV E P H O E N I X A Z 8 5 0 0 9 W W W. L I T H O T E C H A Z . C O M
2021
Hopefully a vacation!
Contributors Alison Bailin Batz Carly Hanson Jeff Kronenfeld Mary Louise Long Tim Mages Jay Mark Luke M. Snell Doug Sydnor Tom Yount Production Manager Laura Horner laura@arizcc.com
What are you looking forward to in 2020? Getting organized!
Summer Internships
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Magazine Advisor Chuck Runbeck chuck@arizcc.com Publisher’s Representative Barry Warner The new section of the 202 opening barry@arizcc.com Advertising 602-931-0069 arizcc.com/advertise Visit us 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 © 2020 All rights reserved.
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Construction Around Arizona: Projects • People • Practices Back When - Bully for Roosevelt Dam! Douglas Towne Joint Head Dam: The Valley’s Forgotten “Salt” Water Diversion - Tom Yount Phoenix’s Center Street Bridge: Long and Long Gone Douglas Towne The Ponte Milvio: Leonard Monti’s Plan to Bring an Italian Medieval Bridge to Tempe - Jay Mark Roads of Gold: How Phoenix’s Canals Shape the Valley’s Past and Future - Jeff Kronenfeld Building on the Past - 1961: Salt River Sand & Gravel Operations Architect’s Perspective - William Francis Cody, FAIA: Experimenter - Doug Sydnor, FAIA
Digging Through the Archives - The Salt River’s Bridge of Pipes - William Horner
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Bid Results - Bidjudge
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ACC Advertisers’ Index
Front Cover The Arizona Sand & Rock Co.’s fleet of concrete trucks at their Salt River plant with the Central Avenue Bridge in the background, 1956. Inset - Postcard celebrating the completion of the Center Street Bridge, 1911.
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From The Editor - The Rebirth of the Salt River Douglas Towne
Jan-Feb 2020
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From the editor: The Rebirth of the Salt River Douglas Towne
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T
o begin our ninth year of publication, Arizona Contractor & Community magazine is spotlighting the feature that resulted in the creation of Phoenix: The Salt River. There are many aspects of the river, but we’ll focus mostly on infrastructure associated with the Valley: aggregate mining, bridges, canals, and diversion dams. The Salt River, which has its headwaters in the White Mountains of eastern Arizona, once flowed unrestrained through the Valley. In 1867, entrepreneur Jack Swilling formed an irrigation company that refurbished some of the canals created by the ancient Hohokam people. Swilling’s early water delivery system led to the growth of what is today the nation’s fifth-largest city. The completion of Roosevelt Dam on the Salt River in 1911 provided valuable water storage to the young city. Five more storage dams were built upstream of the Valley, on the Salt and Verde rivers. By the 1940s, most of the Salt River’s flow was rerouted into canals at Granite Reef Diversion Dam. While the Valley flourished economically with this dependable water supply for farming and urban development, the Salt River did not. The river, once a vibrant greenbelt for wildlife and residents, became a dry, barren riverbed. The lifeless river suffered further ignominy, becoming a dumping ground for the Valley’s refuse.
ago.
But things began to change 25 years
“Post-industrial wildlife habitat” sounds like an oxymoron, but not at the 595-acre Rio Salado Habitat Restoration Area. The five-mile section of the Salt River, from 28th Street downstream to 19th Avenue, has been reborn as a lush forest that is home to more than 200 species of birds and animals.
The renewal began in 1993 when the city of Phoenix partnered with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on the $84 million Rio Salado Habitat Restoration Project. The project, which was completed in 2005, transformed the blighted river corridor that now has 16 miles of hiking and biking trails. Some of the trails feature curb and gutter remnants, recycled as unique benches. The most vital ingredient, water, was supplied by storm drains, irrigation returns, and five supply wells that tap a non-potable floodplain aquifer to create flow in this section of the Salt River. The riparian habitat was improved by removing 1,185 tons of tires and more than 135,000 cubic yards of debris to create a recreational destination near Downtown Phoenix. For those more into green buildings than greenbelts, the crown jewel of the project is the Nina Mason Pulliam Rio Salado Audubon Center, located off Central Avenue just south of the Salt River. The nature center’s home is a Platinum LEED building that opened in 2009 and features solar power, waste-water recycling, rainfall capture, and low-water-use fixtures. Top: Nina Mason Pulliam Rio Salado Audubon Center, 2019. Left: Discarded curb and gutter remnant repurposed as a bench, 2019.
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Projects . PEOPLE . PRACTICES
CONSTRUCTION AROUND ARIZONA Projects
CONSTRUCTION AROUND ARIZONA
Ottawa University Expands Surprise Campus Mary Louise Long
F
or many years Surprise’s downtown area consisted only of City Hall, a library, and a police station. Today, with a growing campus, Ottawa University’s students are the first to live in the city center, said Mike Hoover, the city’s economic development director. In October, Ottawa University Arizona (OUAZ) opened the doors of three new buildings on campus. The more than $50-million construction project includes the O’Dell Center for Athletes, Scholars arizcc.com
Hall, and OUAZ Student Union. The school is located at 15950 N. Civic Center Plaza. Hoover said he hopes the presence of the student residents will increase the development of the city center. Scholars Hall was a $20-million project contracted by Wespac Construction. The 76,000-square-foot, four-story woodframed residence hall contains 83 rooms, 332 beds, four student lounges, campus security, and offices for faculty and student affairs. J.J. Stewart, a project manager at Wespac Construction, said: “the development that is sparked with the growth of Ottawa University is exciting for the further development of that area.”
A partnership between the City of Surprise and OUAZ helped to fast track some of the building process, “including inspections and some of those aspects that are usually cumbersome,” Stewart said. “Overall, the build and development of Scholars Hall was fairly simple and didn’t raise any more issues than normal when working with a wood frame. The amazing part to me, as a builder, is the benefit a project brings to the community,” he said. As for the O’Dell Athletic Center, the Top: The O’Dell Center for Athletics under construction on the Ottawa University Surprise campus. Arizona Contractor & Community
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CONSTRUCTION AROUND ARIZONA Projects Center is two walking tracks. Tyner said the tracks were one aspect of the building the city requested to fulfill the absence of a mall or community center where members can walk and get away from the summer heat. The OUAZ Student Union is a $7 million, 27,000-square-foot, two-story building that houses a sleek new dining hall, the OUAZ Fan Shop, student lounge, and recreational areas, and the Surprise Community Conference Center to host meetings and conferences. OUAZ opened its West Valley residential campus in fall 2017 and is a private, not-for-profit Baptist liberal arts university
founded in Ottawa, Kansas, in 1865. Mary Louise Long is a reporter at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Top: The O’Dell Center for Athletics under construction on the Ottawa University Surprise campus. Below left: Scholars Hall under construction on the Ottawa University Surprise campus. Below: The O’Dell Center for Athletics on the Ottawa University Surprise campus.
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building consists of three sections: a recreation center for both the university and the Surprise community, a three-court gym complete with three optional hanging partitions, and a private weight room for the OUAZ sports teams. There is also an entire floor of sports and media department offices and football viewing rooms. OUAZ President Dennis Tyner said he hopes the community can use the recreational space for such programming as youth sports, tournaments, and more. “The O’Dell Center is very attractive to our current and potential future athletes,” Tyner said. One highlighted feature in the O’Dell
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