Tales from the Morgue: Planners versus evolution

Nothing Left To Happenstance

Lake Havasu City ‘Has Everything’

By ART EHRENSTROM
Star Business Editor

Time was when most towns “just growed.” They evolved haphazardly from such nuclei as a saloon and general store, or a flour mill, or a Wells Fargo depot, or a railroad whistle stop.

They owed their origin to the happenstance that some enterprising entrepreneur like early Tucson freight hauler Don Estevan Ochoa or pioneer Tempe flour miller Clarence T. Hayden decided a certain wide place in the road or a certain narrow place in the river was strategically located for a business.

Their founders little dreamed that “progress” might someday make of their once sleepy town a monstrous metropolis teeming with millions of people and be criss-crossed by concrete ribbons called expressways. And many residential areas today have become mingled with smoking, clamorous industrial districts that have polluted air and water. In many places houses and businesses stand side by side in square blocks without relation to each other or any plan or specific reason.

Today companies like the McCulloch Corp., Del Webb Corp., and Kennecott Copper Corp. develop substantial cities by design, starting from scratch but planning well in advance every evolutionary step to assure orderly growth. Thus today in Arizona new towns are emerging to meet the demands of an exploding population.

Sen. Paul Fannin, R-Ariz., has called McCulloch’s Lake Havasu City a prototype for future developments. In a speech to the Senate four years ago, when Lake Havasu City was only two years old, he said:

“The inception and construction of this extraordinary city hold significance for all of us. Lake Havasu City symbolizes the remarkable achievements that can be attained by bold and imaginative free enterprise working in cooperation with enlightened federal, state and local governments.”

He termed it a project of “immense concept” in the tradition of Arizona’s pioneering spirit. “It is,” he added, “well on its way to being many communities in one — a light industry center, a sportsman’s mecca, a vacation resort that will provide services to millions of visitors in the years to come, and, a retirement haven.”

C. V. Wood Jr., president of McCulloch Oil Corp. and McCulloch Properties, Inc., designed and master-planned Lake Havasu City as well as the company’s embryonic Pueblo West, about to be developed in the Arkansas River Valley six miles west of Pueblo, Colorado. He is now working on plans for a third McCulloch city, Fountain Hills, northeast of Scottsdale.

“What fouls up the best laid plans,” says Wood, “is when people start increasing residential density levels. We have limited density through deed restrictions. I hope to God these are never changed to allow greater density but, frankly, I know of no way to assure that it won’t happen in the unforeseeable future.”

He said everything possible has been done to prevent urban sprawl and resultant slums. As for architectural guidelines, he doesn’t believe in making builders conform to any particular pattern — only to existing building code restrictions. “We can only recommend,” he said.

Nor does he believe in pre-building a city as in the cases of Reston and Columbia in the Washington, D.C., area.

“I’m violently opposed to that kind of development,” he declared. “Neither the developers or residents of such a community have any real interest in its future. Here at Havasu we build nothing except commercial structures and these have either been sold or are for sale at cost on a first come, first served basis . . . we’re not in competition with these people . . . It’s their town, not ours. We’re strictly on the land sale business. We won’t sell anyone a lot until he has stood on it.”

Lake Havasu City, less than 250 miles from Tucson by Apache Airline, has an estimated 6,000 residents with room for nearly 70,000 more. Construction is now the main industry, accounting for roughly a third of the city’s employment. Industrial facilities, including four plants operated by the McCulloch Corp. itself, employ about 500 persons. There are more than 200 business, professional and service enterprises, including 25 building firms and more than 30 building subcontractors and suppliers.

There are about 800 single family homes and more than 500 apartment units. Building permits are averaging more than $750,000 a month.

The city has seen churches, three motor hotels, a marina, bowling lanes, golf course, a high school and one elementary school not at capacity and another under construction.

The central plaza, with its fountain, faces public and professional buildings, including a library and the world’s first round post office.

The city is being built on 26 square miles of desert land on the Arizona side of the lake. It is girded by 23 miles of shoreline, protected from commercial encroachment because it has been made a part of 13,000-acre Lake Havasu State Park, stretching southward from the city some 16 miles along the Arizona shore of the lake.

Wood envisions a complete, self-sustaining city of 75,000 residents within 20 years and an eventual invested worth of more than $7 billion.

All this and —eventually — London Bridge, too.

Wood said the target date for completing reconstruction of the bridge is May 9, 1971 — the date it is scheduled to be dedicated by Queen Elizabeth and the Lord Mayor of London.

“She’s booked up 18 months in advance,” he said.

He estimated the bridge, as a tourist attraction, will help pour $80 million a year into the city’s economy. “Without it, it would take 15 to 30 years to generate that great an impact,” he added.