The Del Webb Vision

The Del Webb Corporation was one of Arizona’s largest general contractors at mid
twentieth century. The company built three military bases and a massive Japanese
American internment camp in Arizona during World War II. In the postwar years, Del
Webb constructed shopping centers, museums, multi-generational housing
developments, industrial parks, hospitals, parks, and two large Las Vegas resorts.
But in 1960, Delbert E. Webb, the founder of the corporation, took his organization in an
entirely new direction, building communities for active senior citizens. The corporation
purchased thousands of acres in the desert northwest of Phoenix to build Sun City, a
place for those over age 45 to live, learn, exercise, and remain active and involved. The
company gambled by focusing on twenty percent of the real estate market (senior
citizens) and de-emphasizing the other eighty percent. This revolutionary concept of an
active adult community was an instant success. More than 100,000 prospective buyers
visited Sun City on its grand opening on the three-day New Year’s weekend, 1960, and
263 homes were sold on the first weekend of operation. Sun City grew to a population
of 46,000, the world’s largest active adult community at the time. The Del Webb
Corporation began a second senior community, Sun City West near the first Sun City in
Phoenix. This community grew to a size of 26,000 by its completion in 1998. Del Webb’s
vision of active adult communities was not without its critics. Grey Power senior
advocate Maggie Kuhn called them “playpens for wrinkled babies.” Others questioned
the need for the many rules and restrictive covenants that governed Webb’s Sun City.
Some urban planners criticized the segregation of the elderly apart from other multi-
generational communities with children, cultural diversity, and lower income groups. But,
as Lee Eisenberg, author of The Number, noted, “for downshifters, Sun City isn’t
segregation, it’s liberation.” The community offered fun, a degree of security, and the
orderliness that many retirees desired. In the mid-1980s, Del Webb sent Fred Kuentz,
chairman of Del Webb Communities, Inc., the active adult community subsidiary, to
Tucson to scout for potential properties. The corporation had previously constructed the
Pueblo Gardens development and several downtown office buildings in Tucson. Kuentz
selected open land 15 miles northwest of the Tucson city limits in the new Rancho
Vistoso master-planned community. This acreage was in an unincorporated part of the
county, just north of the then very small town of Oro Valley. Pima County approved
plans for Rancho Vistoso’s development starting in the late 1970s. The Del Webb
corporate leaders had grander plans than just constructing houses in Tucson, they were
building a community. They would construct recreational facilities, meeting rooms, and
social halls to encourage the senior residents to become involved and active in this new
community. “Still young, this will be a community of doers… Vistosans will be free to
participate in a myriad of Vistoso activities, while maintaining an active role in
metropolitan Tucson life, should they so choose,” noted a company brochure. Another
Del Webb publication asserted that this will “not be the sedentary Golden Years their
grand parents talked about, but the active, inspiring years that Del Webb so ingeniously
planned 27 years ago.” Early Construction Begins. With ambitious plans in place, the Del
Webb Corporation began to build Sun City Vistoso (SCV) in the spring of 1986. The first
work focused on construction of roads, parts of the golf course, the recreation center
and sample homes. From the start, serious effort was made to protect as much of the
natural and historic environment possible. as On the golf course, more than 500 trees
were moved and re planted, with a 90% survival rate. Two environmental issues slowed
construction. First, two Harris hawks nested in a tree on the 12th fair way. Work on that
part of the golf course had to wait 55 days until the baby hawks could fly away. Next, a
team of archaeologists hired by the managers discovered several Hohokam prehistoric
sites on the SCV property. Only one site, a pit house dating back to 1100 CE, was
deemed to be historically noteworthy. Construction waited at that location while the
archaeologists sifted through the pit house ruins. They saved several pottery pieces and
native American implements. The archaeologists also supervised the construction of a
replica of a Hohokam pit house near the sales pavilion and made tours available for
several months. Construction on the Mountain Vista Recreational Center began in the
fall of 1986, along with building a sales pavilion and several model homes. The
Recreation Center, a 16-acre complex designed in a southwestern hacienda motif,
would cost $5 million to complete. The sales pavilion and first model homes (located on
Crossbow Drive and Desert Butte Drive) were on display at the Grand Opening on
January 10, 1987. Sales manager Mick Schofield had hired ten “counselors” to take
visitors through the model homes, to help buyers select cabinets, flooring and other
items, and to make sales. The architect of the first model homes was Dan Brodsky, who
explained that the houses were designed in a modified southern California
contemporary southwestern style to fit with architecture in Tucson.