New SAHBA president wants to build group's image

SHELLA CALAMBA
Tucson Citizen
Mon. Jan. 13, 2003

Carole Pawlak, the first woman president of Southern Arizona Home Builders Association, is sales and marketing director of Genesee Construction. During her tenure, she wants to work on the public's image of SAHBA.

TRICIA McINROY/Tucson Citizen

The Southern Arizona Home Builders Association reached a milestone this year, celebrating more than 50 years in existence and installing its first woman president. And along with the laundry list of what have become staple SAHBA issues, one of the group's goals this year is to polish its image.

"A lot of the public has the wrong idea of who home builders are and what SAHBA is all about," said Carole Pawlak, the recently inaugurated president of the organization.

Although 120 builders are part of the group, it has more than 650 members including architectural firms, suppliers and design studios, said Pawlak, who also is the sales and marketing director for the Genesee Co.

"SAHBA represents over 35,000 jobs in southern Arizona, so it's not just home builders," she said. "We would really like to work on the public's perception of who and what SAHBA is."

Since its inception, the group has played an evolving role in the city's growth. Former SAHBA presidents spoke of good government relationships that soured with the advent of new regulations and environmental concerns.

In 1952, Charles Wilson launched the Tucson Home Builders Association, which in 1961 became SAHBA as the members multiplied. Wilson assembled a builders group to strengthen the local industry in response to developer Del Webb expanding into Tucson and using a new technique for exterior walls. Builders here still relied on bricks and blocks.

"We were worried about those exterior frame walls, which were covered with plywood," said Wilson, 82, who built Tucson's first tract of homes - GI Homes - under a U.S. government program after World War II. "Today, practically all your buildings are being built with wood-frame construction," he added.

But with no zoning and environmental demands to confront, Wilson said, SAHBA was a different association in its infancy.

"A lot of it was just for the camaraderie," he said. "We weren't involved as they are today in fighting the environmental problems."

Indeed, Pawlak's agenda includes staying active in the dialogue about the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan.

"I love the desert as much as anyone," she said. "We need to be fair to the desert and we need to do the right thing.... We still don't know who (the plan) will affect and we don't know what it will cost."

Environmental issues have not always commanded strong focus for the group. Bob Caylor, 69, who was SAHBA president in 1966, recalled when development was largely unfettered with a dearth of regulations in place.

"They didn't realize maybe they should have been on the side of the environmentalists a little bit back in the '60s," he said. Although big builders may not like to hear it, "I think if we had paid more attention to the environment way back then, everybody would have won by now."

SAHBA was instrumental in many city projects. In the late 1950s and early '60s, the group persuaded the city and county to use one instead of two sewer systems, which functioned more efficiently and was less costly for Tucson, Caylor said.

David Garber, 73, one of SAHBA's first lobbyists, also recalled the $1,000-A-Mile Deal in the early 1960s, when builders paved far East Side roads including 22nd Street and Golf Links Road.

"We had a partnership with the government," he said. "We worked toward planning the community."

Now the group often is in opposition to government plans to regulate the industry and relations often are adversarial tone. Take the county's impact fees.

Pawlak insisted on calling them "impact taxes."

Although there is a hearing scheduled, the Board of Supervisors is expected to more than double the average per-unit impact fees for new homes to $3,500 from $1,550. The money will go to designated "benefit areas" in unincorporated areas of the county.

"This is something that comes along with the growth of the community," Pawlak said. "To ask builders to be the only ones paying for this really isn't fair. It's taxing a group of people that are not yet known."

She noted home buyers will ultimately foot the bill. "So we want to know that tax is being used specifically for what it was created for," Pawlak said.

Despite what could be a tense battle ahead, Pawlak is intent on smoothing relations with opponents. "I would really like to work with government officials and build a better relationship with them," she said. "We want to be part of the solution. We are not the problem."

She doesn't rule out reaching a middle ground even with environmentalists. "Currently, the two groups are opposed," Pawlak said. "But I think there's room to bring this together so that we are working toward the same goal."