Charles E. Gillman Company Accounting Specialist Sales and Marketing Everready Glass Sales Reps Construction West-Press Printing Health Care CENTRAL ARIZONA COLLEGE DIRECTOR OF HEALTH INFORMATION MANAGEMENT Trades/Construction RANCHO RESORT MAINTANANCE POSITION Administrative & Professional Tucson Urban League CEO/President Mechanical Komatsu Equipment Co Resident Field Mechanic BusinessConstruction business to close180 jobs lost with Building Materials Holding's closing of its SelectBuild Arizona unit here
Arizona Daily Star
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 05.15.2008
A major home-building supply and construction company is pulling out of Tucson, shedding 180 jobs.
San Francisco-based Building Materials Holding Corp. announced on Wednesday that it will close its SelectBuild Arizona framing and concrete business in Tucson in July.
The company provides supplies and construction services to many home builders, including KB Home and Canoa Development in Tucson. About 180 workers in Tucson will be affected by the closure, according to the company.
"Tucson has been hit particularly hard by the downturn in the housing market, and we have to realign our operations accordingly," Stanley Wilson, president and chief operating officer of Building Materials Holding Corp., said in a press release. He noted that building permits dropped by about half in the first quarter of this year, compared to the first quarter of 2007.
Calls to the company were not returned.
KB Home Tucson Office President John Bremond said SelectBuild did a significant amount of work for his company in the Tucson area.
"We will, needless to say, have to rearrange some of our supplier and contractor relationships," he said. "They have been a very good trade partner of ours, and we will miss them."
Mark Jaffee, vice president of Canoa Development, said SelectBuild handled concrete for some of Canoa's projects, but not in Canoa's only current working development, Sycamore Canyon on the East Side.
"In the short term, this change would not affect us," Jaffee said.
Home builders have scaled back building dramatically in Tucson in the wake of the housing slowdown. Among the projects on hold is the 2,400-home Saguaro Springs in Marana, a joint venture between KB Home and Ontario, Calif.-based Empire Land LLC, which is now under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
Building Materials Holding Corp. said it will continue its SelectBuild operations in Phoenix.
● Contact reporter Christie Smythe at 434-4083 or csmythe@azstarnet.com.
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