Not Publicized : Low Profile Kept by Giant Building Firm
The well-known insurance company that is always bragging about how quiet it is makes a great deal of noise compared to the Tutor-Saliba Corp.
The Sylmar-based company is in the top 50 ranking in several categories as a general contractor and heavy contractor--based on compilations by Engineering News-Record magazine--but outside the industry, Tutor-Saliba is as anonymous as most other contracting firms.
All this may change with last week’s approval by the Community Redevelopment Agency of Park Place, a $26-million mixed-use retail/residential development with 190 apartments units at Grand Avenue, Hope Street and Olympic Boulevard.
Downtown Residents
The project is a joint venture of Tutor-Saliba Properties, a subsidiary of Tutor-Saliba headed by Arthur E. Klein, and Urban Pacific Development Corp., headed by Michael V. Reyes.
Klein, who will be spearheading the Park Place development--expected to be in construction in about a year, with completion scheduled for late 1988--was an executive at Goldrich, Kest & Associates before he joined Tutor-Saliba.
Tutor-Saliba built Promenade Towers--also a rental project designed to attract residents to downtown Los Angeles--for the Goldrich Kest/Shapell joint venture.
Nostalgic, Uncompromising
Designed by Rob Wellington Quigley Architects AIA, San Diego, in concert with the Nadel Partnership Inc. and John Williams AIA & Associates, Park Place will consist of a 10-story tower and a 20-story tower in what the architects call a design that “is at once nostalgic and uncompromisingly contemporary.”
The towers will be connected by glass-enclosed sky bridges and will face Olympic Park, redesigned by landscape architect Lawrence Halprin.
The poured-in-place concrete project will feature 280 underground parking spaces and 32,000 square feet of retail shops and neighborhood commercial services. Under terms of the agreement with the Community Redevelopment Agency, 15% of the apartments will be rented to low- and moderate-income tenants, according to CRA Chairman James M. Wood.
Ronald N. Tutor, the outspoken 45-year-old president, explained why the company that restored the San Francisco cable car system, built three terminals at San Francisco International Airport, the main terminal at Oakland International Airport and the Tom Bradley International Terminal at Los Angeles International Airport isn’t exactly a household word.
Contractor’s Plight
“We probably end up on the cutting room floor when the articles are written in newspapers and magazines about major projects, or else we get a sentence at the tail end of the story,” he said.
“The owner or developer always gets top billing, the architect makes sure he’s mentioned, the leasing broker isn’t about to be neglected, but the contractor is often kissed off with a word or two.”
Tutor finds it strange that small projects often get more publicity than large ones, and since his firm rarely works on anything with a contract value of less than $20 million these days, he finds that contractors are the great unknowns of the building industry.
“Even the giants in this industry lack name recognition,” he said. “Rust International Corp., Birmingham, Ala., was the biggest general building contractor in 1985, with $4.5 billion worth of contracts, but 999 people out of 1,000 think rust is something you have on your metal lawn furniture.”
Largest State Builders
(On that same April 17, 1986 Engineering News-Record listing, Tutor-Saliba Corp. ranked 28th, with $284.1 million.
The largest Los Angeles-area general building contractor was C.L. Peck Contractor, 15th, with $366 million.
Other large California firms included Dillingham Construction Corp., Pleasanton, 10th, with $590.8 million; Guy F. Atkinson Co. of California., San Francisco, 13th, with $449.3 million; Swinerton & Walberg Co., San Francisco, 17th, with $365.4 million.
Others were Koll Construction Co., Newport Beach, 18th, with $362.5 million; Fluor Corp., Irvine, 21st, with $342.3 million; Charles Pankow Inc., Altadena, 22nd, with $341 million, and Stolte Inc., Los Angeles, 35th, with $245 million.)
Constructed Schools
“In terms of overall contract work, we were 51st in the nation last year, with $406.3 million,” Tutor said. “That compares with $57.5 million in 1975.”
He added that inflation has contributed much to the volume: “Back when we were building high schools for the Los Angeles Unified School District, a $3-million contract was a big job. That was in the 1960s and early 1970s when we built schools like Los Angeles High, Banning High, Marshall High, University High and Fairfax High.”
Schools accounted for half the firm’s billings in those days. Hospitals were another major segment of the firm’s activities two decades ago, he added. The present firm was organized in 1972, merging two construction companies founded in 1947 by A. G. Tutor and N. M. Saliba.
“Today the jobs are large, more complex, more sophisticated, the kind that test the mettle of our industry,” Tutor said. “Fewer contractors can handle these jobs, and the small contractor has virtually disappeared in California. The gigantic firms like Rust and Turner Construction and firms of our size are all that count anymore.”
More and more of the firm’s work involves public works projects, such as the Redwood Park Bypass near Eureka in Northern California, at $65 million the largest single contract let by Caltrans.
Tutor-Saliba also built the Piper Technical Center near the Brew 102 building on the Santa Ana Freeway, a $51-million job and, at 1.5 million square feet, one of the largest buildings in the city.
One of the firm’s largest recent jobs was the Bradley Terminal at Los Angeles International Airport, with a contract amount of $125 million.
Tutor has noticed a decline in the number of bidders for massive public works projects, a phenomenon he attributes to the difference between “hard-money” contracts for convention centers and airport terminals and “no-guarantee” jobs, such as office buildings, where going over the budget is not the major concern that it is on public works jobs.
“We were the only California-based bidders on the San Jose Convention Center project, a $100-million job,” he said. “The other two bidders were large eastern firms.” Tutor-Saliba’s bid was not the low bid.
