Spreading Webb

Although best known as half-owner of the New York Yankees, a laconic onetime carpenter named Delbert Eugene Webb, 62, has made most of his millions as a builder of shopping plazas and housing projects, hotels and office skyscrapers from Tampa to San Francisco. Last week Phoenix-based Del Webb took on a job that should dwarf all his others.

In partnership with Humble Oil Co., which is the major U.S. subsidiary of Jersey Standard, the Del E. Webb Corp. will build a new community with an anticipated population of 25,000 on 30,000 acres of Texas rangeland between Houston and Galveston. The two companies expect to spend $25 million a year for the next 15 years to put up apartments, factories, churches and shopping centers in the shadow of NASA's manned space flight laboratory. Humble will supply better than 50% of the cash and all the land. Webb will furnish the balance of the bankroll and the know-how for the most ambitious land development in Texas history. Said Webb expansively: "We view this as a program which could mean $375 tb $500 million in development for the Houston area."

Tidy Package. Wall Street, which ordinarily views grandiose announcements from real estate promoters with a wait-and-see shrug, sent Webb Corp. stock up to $15 (from $10 a few months ago). A "package" of Webb stock, warrants and debentures, which was marketed by Wall Street's Lehman Bros, at $77.75 when the company went public 13 months ago, is now worth $230.

The rise is due as much to the past performance as to the future prospects of Webb Corp.-Webb-built Sun City, Ariz., a palm-lined retirement oasis (TIME, March 10), has attracted 5,100 residents.

Webb also controls shopping centers in Phoenix and Tucson and owns five hotels, including the blue-chip Sahara in Las Vegas. Last week Webb broke ground for a 200-room oceanside hotel in San Diego; the company is also building office skyscrapers in Albuquerque and Los Angeles. In the first nine months of 1961, Webb Corp. grossed $45 million.

Handsome Profit. For Del Webb, who holds 46% of Webb Corp. stock, prosperity was slow in coming. Born in Fresno, Calif., he quit high school, became a bush-league pitcher until typhoid fever knocked him off the mound. Webb moved to Phoenix on doctor's orders, took up carpentry. Not until he was in his 405 did Webb get his big opportunity. He formed his own construction company, grew rich during World War II building military bases. After the war, Webb kept right on winning Government contracts, also moved into a variety of civilian enterprises, bought a share of the Yankees for "public relations."

Ten years ago, his junior partner, another ex-carpenter named LaVergne Jacobson, now 48, steered Webb into real estate investment. Jacobson had a convincing argument: such investment would provide a fairly steady income to help smooth the peaks and valleys of the Volatile construction market. Since then, Webb Corp. has been trading contractor fees for interests in the projects it builds. For example, instead of collecting a $100,000 construction fee for the Phoenix shopping center, Webb got an equity share that brought in $80,000 annually for seven years, later was sold for $1,000,000. Enterprising Del Webb figures that such plump profits will look like peanuts at the baseball game once his Texas-sized land development gets off the ground.

*No kin to Promoter William Zeckendorf's Webb & Knapp.

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