Masonry Magazine May 1979 Page. 13
IN THE SOUTHWEST
Arizona Masonry Industry Puts Dent Into Stick Frame Construction
Residential construction in the Phoenix area is currently 80 percent unit masonry. But it hasn't always been that way. Despite the arid climate and intense summer heat which take their toll on wood products, frame construction made strong inroads in the single-family housing market during the 1974-75 recessionary period. And with the mounting influx of large California developers who are virtually wed to stick frame construction, the outlook could have been bleak for Arizona's masonry industry.
Numerous factors have contributed to overcoming the competition in recent years, the foremost being an aggressive promotional program by the management-oriented Arizona Masonry Guild and the union craftsmen-supported Masonry Industry Program of Arizona. These joint campaigns have stressed the handcrafted quality of masonry and its superior insulative, maintenance-free and fire resistive properties. Yet the emphasis has appropriately been on quality.
One Phoenix area mason contractor who has added to and benefits from the industry's reputation for quality is Ed Young, who has been involved in most facets of residential masonry construction in Phoenix during the past 25-plus years. A bricklayer, then foreman, then supervisor with large residential developers for 18 years. Young struck out on his own in 1969 to form AAA Masonry Contractors, Inc.
By most standards, Young's firm began and has remained a small company. And that's just the way Ed wants it.
"We began by building several apartment complexes," Young relates, "and then built the Holiday Inn in Scottsdale." More apartments followed. Yet, drawing from his earlier experience in working for large developers, Young sought his niche in the custom-built residential market.
"The larger the developer, the more speculative homes they build, and that means slower pay," he explains. "It also means you're building more houses at a time. In both cases, the contractor can lose control of dollars and/or quality."
Young found his "niche" in late 1971 when he began working with Russell Riggs, a developer of custom and semi-custom homes in metropolitan Phoenix's prestigious Paradise Valley area. Since then, Young has built more than 200 homes for Riggs in developments of no more than 20 homes, virtually all of which are sold before construction begins. Young normally carries a crew of seven bricklayers and three mason tenders on these projects.
Riggs' homes are three and four-bedroom units measuring about 3,000 square feet on one-acre lots with swimming pools and yard fences. Young relates: "For the first several years, we exclusively built homes of Spanish design using 8x4x16 concrete block. Since then, the product line has been expanded to include many Mediterranean-style homes, and more recently we're building some Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired homes of a very modern design." In addition, for cost efficiency, Young now builds with 8x8x16 units on jobs to be stuccoed.
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