Sunday, March 16, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.
First of two parts in the Las Vegas SUN.
There are 10 Sun City communities in five states where the sun shines and retirees bask in comfortable digs that are a reward at the end of a successful career.
More than 96,000 people live in the 10 communities and the Phoenix-based Del Webb Corp. last year sold its 50,000th retirement home.
Most of the Del Webb corporate offices scattered across the country -- like the one at Sun City Summerlin -- are located on Del Webb Boulevard.
It's a tribute to a man whose influence emanated nationwide from bases in the American Southwest, including Las Vegas.
Webb was a building contractor with a passion for baseball. His company grew with an abundance of federal contracts in the wake of World War II. Among the projects the company undertook: the original Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas; Anaheim Stadium, home of the Walt Disney-controlled Anaheim Angels baseball team; and Madison Square Garden, where the New York Knicks basketball team and New York Rangers hockey team play.
During Webb's career, the business diversified to include partial ownership of the New York Yankees baseball team when it won 10 world championships. The company also got into Nevada's gaming industry and became the first publicly traded corporation to operate a casino.
Longtime Las Vegas businessman Herb McDonald said most people appreciated Webb's hands-off approach to doing business.
"The first thing he would say is 'Just keep doing what you're doing' when he'd come around," McDonald said from his Las Vegas home, where one of the pictures in his gallery of famous faces is a candid shot of Webb with Yankee great Joe DiMaggio. "He was never too demanding."
Webb maintained friendships with Howard Hughes, for whom he built a number of projects, and Bob Hope, Danny Thomas and Bing Crosby, with whom he played many rounds of golf in celebrity tournaments.
The Sun City concept was introduced in 1960 and changed the landscape of retirement living. Nowhere is the Sun City lifestyle more successful than in Southern Nevada where there are two communities, Summerlin in northwest Las Vegas and MacDonald Ranch in Henderson, with a third planned southwest of MacDonald Ranch to open by 1999.
Nearly 12,000 people reside in Nevada's Sun City developments with more than 25,000 projected in the three properties.
The success of the Sun City properties has led Del Webb to operate a home-building division for conventional neighborhoods. Del Webb's Coventry Homes has five neighborhoods under construction in Southern Nevada.
And next on the Las Vegas horizon is a country club subdivision. The company reports that its Terravita development in Scottsdale, Ariz., with home prices ranging from $170,000 to $500,000, is nearly sold out. A similar project is planned in Southern Nevada in a yet-to-be-determined location.
Today, real estate drives the company. Last year, Builder magazine applauded the company's growth, pointing to a 10-year increase in housing starts of 330 percent since 1986. Kaufman and Broad, which also has a presence in Southern Nevada, was a distant second with a 121 percent increase over the same period.
But the real estate engine didn't hit on all cylinders until after Webb and his associates made some important -- and sometimes painful -- decisions affecting thousands of Nevadans.
Del E. Webb was born in Fresno, Calif., in 1899.
Published histories about Webb say he quit high school during his freshman year to help his family when his father's company ran into financial difficulty. He picked up carpentry jobs, working only for companies that had baseball teams.
In his younger days, he held a dream to someday play for a Major League Baseball team, a dream that came to an end in 1927 when he contracted typhoid fever. He and his wife, Toni, decided to move to Phoenix while he recuperated, a movethat eventually changed his life and the building industry.
Webb had an athletic build and kept in good shape after his bout with typhoid.
After an employer bounced a check to Webb, he decided to start his own company and vowed to apply the rules of baseball to his business -- teamwork, showmanship and grace under pressure.
He developed a relationship with Arizona grocer A.J. Bayless and eventually received contracts to build several supermarkets in the Valley of the Sun.
Through the 1930s, Webb's company grew to be one of the largest in the state. Successful bids on numerous defense contracts followed, giving the company stability during the Depression. Webb's jobs soon crossed over Arizona's borders. His first Nevada project was to build a Union Oil service station in Las Vegas in 1931.
Webb used contacts established during the war years to build partnerships in the post-war era.
His interest in flying drew him to Howard Hughes, who hired Webb to build some of his factories. Flying and golf-course relationships developed into friendships with the Goldwater brothers, Robert and Barry.
Herb McDonald, now director of special events at the Showboat and a man who helped Webb coordinate many of his golf events, said Webb would try to play golf five days a week.
"Mr. Webb would play to a smaller handicap, so he lost a lot of money on the golf course," said McDonald, who credited Webb with giving the Hawaiian Open tournament its start.
The connection to Howard Hughes is particularly relevant to the development of northwest Las Vegas.
"Even today, our paths are crossing constantly," Webb Senior Vice President Frank Pankratz said of the relationship between Webb and the Howard Hughes Co., which is developing Summerlin.
"We're their best customer," Vice President Scott Higginson said of the current rapport with Hughes. "They have land to sell and we have houses to build."
Webb's reputation as a home builder took off in Arizona. But baseball lingered as one of his biggest interests.
In 1945, Webb diversified his holdings and fulfilled a dream by purchasing the New York Yankees franchise with two partners. The Yankees won the World Series 10 times in the 20 years Webb owned them. Most of the players enjoyed the Webb years.
"He had his hands in many industries, but I'll always remember him as a quality baseball man," said former Nevada Gov. Mike O'Callaghan, now the executive editor of the Las Vegas SUN. "He had a lot of great players ... Joe DiMaggio, Whitey Ford, Mickey Mantle. Those were some great teams."
McDonald recalled that Webb would provide World Series tickets to a number of his employees and had boxes in several stadiums.
Mantle eventually worked as a casino host in a Webb property. While the company's interest flourished in the 1960s, he had his first connection with the industry much earlier.
Webb got his first taste of the Nevada gaming scene when he was the contractor for construction of the Flamingo Hotel for Bugsy Siegel in 1946.
In a history written about the company, Webb marveled at how Siegel paid off quickly -- and with cash. Webb said in one meeting with the gangster, Siegel brandished a gun and was purported to have assured him, "Don't worry. We only kill each other."
It wasn't until 1961 that Webb bought hotel properties in Nevada. He purchased the 500-room Sahara and the Mint and Lucky Strike Club in downtown Las Vegas. Webb and Howard Hughes were welcomed by Nevada regulatory authorities with open arms because they offered an air of respectability to the industry.
Meanwhile, the home-building market took a major turn. On Jan. 1, 1960, Webb unveiled a new concept in retirement real estate -- an age-restricted community called Sun City -- in a cotton field in northwestern Phoenix.
"Webb was the pioneer in this kind of project," Higginson said. "He would put in all the amenities and fulfill the promises before putting out a single for-sale sign."
At the first Sun City, Webb built a golf course, a recreation center, a shopping center and five model homes, anticipating about 10,000 visitors over the New Year's holiday. Instead, during a three-day weekend, an estimated 100,000 toured the area. In that first weekend, the company made 237 sales and recorded 400 in the first month it was open.
Webb thought the same concept would fly in another retirement mecca, Florida. But a Sun City south of Tampa located between two major thoroughfares failed. Local economic shortcomings were blamed.
As the success of the Arizona Sun City took off, Webb was given credit for establishing a new way of life for retirees. His picture appeared on the cover of Time magazine's Aug. 3, 1962, edition.
The following year, Webb established another first for Nevada. The Del Webb Corp. went public and was traded on the New York Stock Exchange. It became the first company to own casinos to be publicly traded. Because Nevada gaming regulators had never had to license public companies, it changed the entire regulatory process. Instead of conducting background checks on every shareholder, regulators focused scrutiny on key members of the board of directors, a process that has been refined, but is basically intact today.
With bases firmly established in Phoenix and Las Vegas, Webb's company branched out. In 1966, the company got the contract to build the 44,000-seat Anaheim Stadium for what was then the Los Angeles Angels. The Big A has housed the team that has endured two name changes since its inception.
In Nevada, Webb built Las Vegas City Hall, Clark High School, Valley High School and some of the facilities at McCarran International Airport. The company also built a tower for the Mint that at one time was the tallest structure in the state. It also expanded or built Caesars Palace, the building that is now the Las Vegas Hilton, the Riviera and the Aladdin hotel-casinos, the Sahara Reno, the High Sierra and the Nevada Club in Laughlin.
Webb continued his reputation for building in remote locations where others wouldn't go.
During the 1960s and '70s, the Webb empire continued to expand with hotel properties built globally. Leisure properties were acquired on the Pacific Rim and in Hawaii.
The company's experience building in remote locations was put to the test in projects in Central America, where roads and bridges were built as well as hotels.
By 1972, Webb was the largest gaming operator and the largest private employer in Nevada.
Spread over such a wide area, some divisions of the company began to slide and the company became a target for takeover. Among the personalities making bids to take over the company were Frank Sinatra and Las Vegas SUN Publisher Hank Greenspun.
In the mid-'70s, the company continued to diversify domestically, taking on the houseboat and marina concessions at Lake Powell, a Colorado River reservoir in northern Arizona and southern Utah.
It was one of the last expansions the company would make.
Del Webb died on July 4, 1974, a few months after conducting the company's annual meeting.
Although Webb had a healthy appearance and didn't smoke or drink, a tumor developed on one of his lungs. It was discovered after surgery that the cancer had metastasized. Doctors discovered that the cancer had spread to his prostate, but lung cancer was listed as his official cause of death.
Del Webb's death came as a shock to employees and colleagues. A man who had the ear of nearly every president during his lifetime and some of the top names in business and industry was gone and had no heirs to take over the company.
His death came right around the time when an energy crisis began lapping at most of the divisions within the Webb company. As the price of fuel went up, visitors stayed at home instead of going to Las Vegas, Lake Powell and all the other resort hotels. Sales at Sun City fell. In the cyclical economy of growth and development, Del Webb was in for a swoon.
There were continued attempts to take over the company.
Through the 1980s, the company weathered the same highs and lows many big companies experienced, battling a prime interest rate that at times hovered around 21.5 percent.
The home-building market was soft in the early 1980s, but company officials studied demographics and predicted a big demand for retirement living. The company's board of directors decided to sell off many assets and focus on the Sun City properties. Current Webb Chief Executive Officer Phil Dion said the company was downsized from 12,000 employees in 1980 to 500 in 1990.
By 1989, construction at Sun City Summerlin was under way and Webb was out of the gaming industry. The Summerlin property was the fourth Sun City project and the first successful venture outside Arizona.
Most people's remembrances about Webb paint a portrait of a benevolent boss and a kind philanthropist.
Colorful baseball legend Yogi Berra tells stories of Webb forever apologizing about firing him.
"He was a quiet, unassuming gentleman," McDonald said of Webb. "Even though he liked being around the celebrities and the old golfers, he knew all the little people's names.
"There were times when he was in town when he was on his own that he would just call my wife and me up to go to dinner to just talk. He'd tell stories about golf and about business and things that were going on at the time."
McDonald and his wife, Darlene, still maintain a Christmas-card relationship with Webb's widow, Toni, who lives in Southern California.
"She's a fantastic lady," McDonald said of Toni. "She never played the boss's wife."
IN MONDAY'S SUN: The future of Del Webb Corp.
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