Industry update

              Phoenix Metro Area
Manufacturing
With many details still to be worked out, a
city of Chandler official announced that a for-mer
manufacturing plant, once used to make
equipment for the B-2 stealth bomber, will
be leased by a Valley circuit board maker.
The 157,000-square-foot plant near Price
Road and Chandler Boulevard — which was
abandoned but is still owned by Northrop
Grumman Corp. — will likely become home
to more than 100 workers for an as-yet
named Valley circuit board producer. Be-tween
January 1995 and mid-1998, the facil-ity
housed 40 Northrup Grumman workers
who manufactured electromagnetic materials
for the stealth bomber before production was
phased out.
A Minnesota-based manufacturer of rubber
linings for pipes is opening a plant in Casa
Grande. Industrial Rubber Products Inc.
expects the 7,000-square-foot facility to start
operation in May. No information was
available on the number of employees the
company planned to hire.
Construction
Phelps Dodge Corp. plans to build a 20-
story office building in downtown Phoenix
to house its corporate headquarters and 250
employees. The $78 million high-rise, to be
bounded by Central Avenue and First, Adams,
and Washington streets, will also have an addi-tional
200,000 square feet available for lease
to other companies. Ryan Cos. is expected to
begin work on the building later this year,
with completion set for November 2001.
The Phelps Dodge building is one of about
$2 billion in projects currently under way
or in the planning stages for downtown
Phoenix. Bank of America will anchor,
sometime in 2000, the first of three 23-story
buildings being built as part of the $500 mil-lion
Collier Center. Also, the Marriott
Corp. recently announced it will operate a
$127 million, 31-story hotel at the Collier
Center. Complimenting the Marriott will be a
350-room Embassy Suites hotel, with work
getting under way this summer. And finally,
a $30 million, 5,000-seat performing-arts
center is being built on two acres at Fourth
and Fifth avenues north of Washington Street.
Trade
It took decades to open a Nordstrom depart-ment
store in the Valley, but only six addi-tional
months to receive a commitment for a
second, albeit smaller, Phoenix-area store.
Seattle-based Nordstrom has signed on to
be part of a 1.3 million-square-foot San
Tan Mall in Chandler. The two-story
144,000-square-foot store will be about two-thirds
the size of Nordstrom’s first Arizona
store at Fashion Square in Scottsdale. Devel-oper
Westcor Cos. expects the open-air mall
at the Price Freeway near Chandler Boule-vard,
which will also include a Dillard’s and
Robinsons-May, to open in spring of 2001.
Mexican fast-food chain Del Taco will open
15 stores in the Phoenix area over the
next several months, with plans to add 15
more down the road. The privately-held Cali-fornia-
based chain, which operates 340 res-taurants
in 10 states, also has one location
under construction in Tucson and is planning
others in several cities throughout the state.
Services
An impending $1.8 billion merger of Sa-maritan
and Lutheran Health Systems,
which will create a health juggernaut in the
INDUSTRY UPDATE
Biweekly Period Ending May 8, 1999
east Valley, is expected to be completed by Sep-tember.
However, the joining of Good Samari-tan
Regional Medical Center in Phoenix with
three hospitals in Mesa — Desert Samaritan,
Mesa Lutheran, and Valley Lutheran — is ex-pected
to cause layoffs down the line. While
no details about job reductions have been an-nounced,
hospital officials have conceded that
cutbacks in areas such as materials management
and human resources will be forthcoming.
Tucson Metro Area
Manufacturing
Through early April, Raytheon Corp. had
filled about two-thirds of the 2,000 engi-neering
openings created by the consolida-tion
of its missile operations in Tucson.
Many of the positions in software and sys-tems
development, electronics, and radar
have been filled through transfers from other
Raytheon operations in Texas and Massachu-setts.
But college job fairs have also been
used to recruit workers.
Construction
In late April, Pinal County supervisors ap-proved
a plan for a new-home develop-ment
that over the next 20 to 25 years will
triple the population of Oracle, a commu-nity
of 4,500 about 25 miles northeast of Tuc-son.
The nearly 3,900-home Rancho
Coronado project, which was scaled down
by 2,000 homes, was given the OK despite
vocal protest during the supervisors’ meeting.
One of the reasons given for approving the
project was to offset a loss of jobs at the
nearby BHP copper mine in San Manuel.
Developer Sharp and Associates has begun the
first phase of a 2,800-acre retirement commu-nity
south of Tucson. The Rancho Sahuarita
project, near Interstate 19 and Sahuarita Road,
will consist of 1,800 manufactured homes
and a 20,000-square-foot clubhouse. The devel-oper
estimates it will take 11 to 14 years to
complete the project — geared toward baby
boomers wanting a second home — with 75 to
200 homes added a year.
Miscellaneous
The Greater Tucson Economic Council
(GTEC) reported a slight decrease in the
number of companies it helped relocate
to the Tucson area in the first three quarters
of GTEC’s fiscal year. The economic-devel-opment
agency helped 11 companies relo-cate
compared to 15 for the same period the
year before. The 11 companies, including
BCB Voice Systems and Ingram Micro, are ex-pected
to hire about 950 workers.
Statewide
Despite a 5 percent decline in high-technol-ogy
enrollees nationwide between 1990 and
’96, Arizona had a 2 percent increase in
majors such as computer sciences, engi-neering,
and mathematics. According to a
study based on U.S. Department of Educa-tion
data, Arizona schools graduated nearly
3,500 with high-tech degrees in ’96, with Ari-zona
State University leading the way with
1,165 technology graduates. This was fol-lowed
by the University of Arizona, 767;
DeVry Institute, 735; Northern Arizona Uni-versity,
138; and ITT Technical Institute, 137.
Nationwide, the jobless rate for high-tech ca-reers
is extremely low.
Industry Update is produced biweekly as a stand-alone
publication and quarterly as part of Arizona Economic
Trends by the Arizona Department of Economic Secu-rity,
Research Administration. Industry Update is a
compilation of public announcements and articles
from newspapers and periodicals about business
events significant to Arizona labor markets. Due to
space limitations, however, an exhaustive list of indus-try
news is not feasible. In addition, DES, Research Ad-ministration
is not responsible for incorrect information
reported by these sources. For more information, con-tact
DES, Research Administration by writing to 1789
W. Jefferson St., Site Code 733A, Phoenix, AZ 85007,
or calling (602) 542-3871.
INDUSTRY UPDATE
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