in 1978 by taking a job with Bassett, Hayden & Ray, a local brokerage and development company. Hammond said he knew sales coming from the insurance market, but relied heavily on mentor Perry Bassett during his beginning years in commercial real estate. Bassett refutes that version of events, saying he learned as much from Hammond as he taught him. “Mike was a natural, a pure salesman, one of the best I’ve ever been around,” Bassett said. “He’s very smart, he works hard, he follows through and he knows every aspect of the deal.” Before leaving Bassett, Hayden & Ray to start what became PICOR, Hammond had already built a reputation as a leading industrial specialist in commercial real estate in Southern Arizona. “Mike has done a very impressive job of building the company,” said Bassett, now president of Bassett Property Company. “He is a great manager. He hires good people, trains them well and helps them succeed. And though he has accomplished so much, he is a very unpretentious person. Success hasn’t changed him. He is still the same guy I knew 35 years ago.” Hammond, named “Tucson Man of the Year” by Greater Tucson Leadership in 2013, has served in a plethora of leadership positions including with the Southern Arizona Leadership Council, Arizona Association for Economic Development, Community Finance Corp., Arizona Town Hall, Urban Land Institute and Arizona State Transportation Board. Both PICOR and Hammond are well known for giving time and money to various charitable and philanthropic causes. Though Hammond is not contemplating retirement, he said he does plan to step down as managing shareholder within the next year-and-a-half to concentrate on community service work and his growing industrial real estate activities in Sonora, Mexico. “I still love the thrill of the deal – but I want to get out of the management of the company and turn it over to the young guys,” Hammond said. “I don’t have a 10- or 15-year horizon for this company. I’ve got a great crop of young shareholders coming up and they’re the ones who need to be making those decisions.”
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