Anaheim Teamed Up With All-Star of Builders : Arena: HuntCor has made fans nationwide with its sports facilities. City officials hope its winning streak continues.

Ask the people who have hired HuntCor Inc. to talk about the company’s record in building new sports facilities, and their answers sound like billboards for the H. Norman Schwarzkopf of corporate America.

From Memphis, where the company’s sister corporation is building a $61-million basketball arena, facility general manager Russ Simons raves: “They have done an extraordinary job--it’s on time, on budget and it’s a spectacular signature piece of architecture. I’m impressed.”

Next stop: Anaheim.

There, straddled by the Orange Freeway to the west and the Santa Ana River to the east, HuntCor will build a 19,200-seat sports and entertainment complex at a price tag of about $100 million. The city chose the Phoenix company Tuesday as the general contractor for the arena.

The facility, scheduled to open in late summer, 1993, doesn’t have a principal tenant yet. But Anaheim city officials are banking on the biggest name in the sports construction business both to help them lure a professional basketball and/or hockey team and beat Santa Ana in the race to complete Orange County’s first full-scale sports arena.

“It was a dream--now, it’s a reality,” Anaheim Mayor Fred Hunter said of the week’s developments. “I’m real excited this thing is going to happen. We’re just sitting back, waiting for opening day.”

The mayor is so excited that he’s even pitching a name for whatever basketball team may end up in town: the Anaheim Mickeys.

On Jan. 9, the city sold $103 million worth of bonds to cover construction costs of the arena in a deal that city officials say was favorable because of the market’s low interest rates at that time.

Underwritten by Merrill Lynch & Co. of New York, the bonds were sold in a one-day issuance at an interest rate of 8.625% and in $100,000 denominations. They were purchased mostly by investment companies, mutual funds and some individual investors.

That rate was one full percentage point below the market rate, at a time when the market had hit a three-year low, George P. Ferrone, finance director for the city, said Wednesday. That saved the city up to $1 million, he estimated.

“We happened to sell at the ideal time,” Ferrone said. “Had we sold a week earlier, we would have lost money in higher interest payments.”

Construction projects of the scope and complexity of that in Anaheim are notorious for huge cost overruns and design mishaps. But HuntCor, and its other corporate entities operated out of Indianapolis by the Hunt Corp., seem largely to have avoided such pitfalls.

HuntCor did lose an arbitration hearing in San Diego stemming from construction of the city’s convention center, which opened in 1989. But in projects ranging from the Superdome in New Orleans, down through open stadiums in Cincinnati and Pittsburgh and smaller arenas around the country, the company has largely maintained its stellar reputation.

“They have a track record for getting projects done within scope, within cost, within a time frame that cities and franchises have to have,” said Douglas Albo, senior executive at Tampa Coliseum Inc., which hired the firm to put up a sports arena now in the design stage.

Said Charles Henderson, vice president of the Bradley Center Corp., which worked with the Hunt Corp. to build a sports arena in Milwaukee under a tight deadline in 1988: “For the job they were given, I give them an ‘A.’ ”

Simons, the general manager of the Memphis facility, said the company’s experience comes through in working closely with facility operators to avoid problems--from knowing how tall to make shower stalls for NBA players to letting him know what office furniture will match roof tiling.

“I find them to be incredibly professional,” Simons said.

The company ranks 29th among a listing of the 400 biggest contracting firms nationwide, based on 1990 volume, according to the Engineering News-Record, an industry weekly.

ENR associate editor Richard Korman said simply: “Nobody builds as many arenas and stadiums as them--they’re the tops.”

As many sports complexes as HuntCor has put together, Anaheim project executive Bob Aylesworth said in a phone interview Wednesday from the company’s Phoenix offices: “This is a very important project for us. It’s a high-profile sports facility.”

In the end, Aylesworth said, the company’s reputation may have had less to do with its pick by Anaheim as the contractor than the simple fact that it was the low bidder among seven would-be contractors--about half a million dollars under PCL Construction Services of Irvine.

“We just sharpened our pencil a little better than the other guys,” he said.