For this issue’s ROX Interview, ROX Group Chairman Rock Earle and Vice President of Operations Bea Lueck sat down with longtime friend Steve Murray, one of Maricopa’s pioneering businessmen and realtors, to reminisce and speculate on the City’s future.
Rock Earle: We’re sitting here with Steve Murray, who is a broker extraordinaire. We used to call him Maricopa Murray. And I think that’s still your gmail, right? Maricopamurray@gmail.com?
Steve Murray: It is, yeah. It still is.
Rock Earle: I love it. OK, so I’m Rock Earle, and Bea Lueck is with us, and Steve Murray. Should we go back … 30 years?
Steve Murray: Probably. I moved to Maricopa in 1997.
Rock Earle: Perfect, that’s where I want to start. I met you soon thereafter, and our paths crossed in an area we call Section 14, which is the site now of an airport that the Ak-Chin Indian tribe ended up buying from its developer, and I was one of the originators. And you were renting a building or owned a building, and you were in the trailer-manufacturing business at the time.
Steve Murray: Right, we bought the building from Scott Ries, one of Rock’s partners. And it was supposed to be finished when we closed, and it hadn’t been started, so we lived in a RV for a year while they worked on the building.
Rock Earle: And there was some transaction where I ended up getting one of your trailers. It was a 13-and-a-half-foot white utility trailer. And I still own and use it.
Steve Murray: We were a distributor for boat trailers, and then we got into the manufacturing side of it, and that was one of the products that we built that you bought.
Rock Earle: And prior to that, do I remember you were traveling between Colorado and Arizona a lot?
Steve Murray: I was running the largest marine distributorship in the western U.S. And we were an OMC, Outboard Marine Corporation, distributor, which was Johnson and Evinrude. And we had 12 states, which I traveled with that. That was a very good situation except the manufacturer came in and bought us out.
Rock Earle: And I remember right in the same era you had gotten to know a lot of people in Maricopa, and I and various other friends strongly encouraged you to get a real estate license.
Steve Murray: That’s right. Rock, of course you did. And then a fellow by the name of Ed Peters was buying a lot of property at the time, and I only had a manufactured home license. I was the general manager of Sundance Homes.
Rock Earle: I remember Dawn Theroux and Don Handlin. She-Dawn and he-Don had that dealership, and they ended up buying a really nice property with frontage from me in Maricopa. You were buying and selling lots and doing splits and moving homes on, and you really killed it.
Steve Murray: Yes. We were doing between 10 and 15 manufactured homes a month, but we had about 15 model homes on the lot. And then we would go out, and people would come in and pick their house out, and then we would go and show them land. But I didn’t have a real estate license, so we would tie it into a land-home package.
Everybody was encouraging me to get into the real estate business, so I did go get my license, and that’s how we got started. It was really a boomtown for land at the time. There weren’t any houses involved.
Bea Lueck: What was the first brokerage you worked for?
Steve Murray: I had a friend in the Valley who had one called Pro-America, and I just put my license with him. Then another land person in Maricopa started a company called Fortuna Land, a fellow by the name of Ray Morrow. Super nice guy. He got his license early, and then he was very involved in Hidden Valley. But when the downturn happened, he pretty much lost everything that he had built in a short period of time. By then I had my broker license, so I just went out and started the Maricopa Real Estate Company.
Rock Earle: So that’s … We’re at the stage now where all of the huge success, craziness happened with Maricopa Real Estate Company, and you became the kingpin in that town. He’s laughing at me, but it’s true. You became the social arbiter of everything, and there’s nothing that happens there that you don’t know. And you’re the city’s contracted real estate broker too.
Steve Murray: Dawn sold Sundance Homes, and then she owned the C.P. Honeycutt home, the beautiful home in Maricopa. She just used one part of it, and she said, “You can have the other part for your real estate office.” So we moved into that, and it’s kind of a landmark in town. I started my own company, and I think five or six agents including Jay Shaver and Mary Ann Toohey, who helped start the company, left Fortuna and came over with me. Three or four of them are still with us now.
And my goal was to stay in that house. But I got a lot of pressure from the agents to get into an office more in the center of town. By then, obviously the town was developing. Jimmy Kamouzis came to me and said, “I want out of here, and I’ll give you the Prudential deal and the agents and everything if you’ll just sign a lease for the building.”
I think we got about 10 of their agents, and we paid a percentage of their commission to him, then we signed a 5-year lease with him. And we extended that once, and then we just signed a 10-year lease a year ago. We’ve been fairly dominant in Maricopa, as far as sales and listings and stuff.
When we were originally going, our rent was $500 a month. We didn’t have any expenses. We didn’t have any money, and we didn’t have any debt, which was good, I guess. We just left it there and started doing transactions immediately. And from there on out, we were on our own. We never borrowed any money. It’s just been good from there on out. COVID’s the toughest thing we’ve been through. Other than that, it’s been pretty steady growth.
Rock Earle: That was worse than the current high interest rates?
Steve Murray: Oh, yeah. Much. We lost 30 agents. We were at 80, we went to 50. We’re back to 60 now. And then the interest rates came along, but it’s been pretty steady growth for us. I spent a lot of time selling stuff in Hidden Valley, so we still get a lot of referrals from there. And that market’s really good, to be honest with you. There’s a lot going on in Hidden Valley.
Rock Earle: It’s unrecognizable from when I was driving up and down those dirt roads 30 years ago.
Steve Murray: A lot of them are paved. They’re chip sealed now, so there’s a lot of growth.
Bea Lueck: And a lot of custom homes have gone in out there.
Rock Earle: Next to the 50-year-old single-wides.
Steve Murray: Yeah, and we’ve got about 40 manufactured homes going in there now.
Rock Earle: So, Maricopa Real Estate Company has been amazingly successful in a town that has been growing just off the charts, setting records.
And I think you have your kids involved with you.
Steve Murray: That’s correct. Yeah, Ryan and Brady. Brady’s really running the company now. I have been taking a step back to enjoy time with my wife, Gina Salazar, who I married in 2009 and lives in Casa Grande. Ryan’s my oldest son and he was diagnosed with cancer last year, but he’s doing really well now. He is back at work part time. Brady’s the one who’s been doing almost everything, especially with my issue last year.
Rock Earle: Steve suffered a cardiac arrest and was out for five weeks. And through the miracles of modern medicine is back stronger and better than ever.
Steve Murray: Yeah. Thanks to the Maricopa Fire Department, they have all the new equipment, the CPR machine, which is what saved my life. And you hope they have them everywhere because they make all the difference, and they put that on me and, of course, it got me breathing again, and it is an amazing piece of equipment. You’ve got them here in Casa Grande. And it turned out to be a fairly minor issue. I had some electrical issues.
Rock Earle: I called you on the phone about a year ago, and it was kind of a respectful joke, I called you something like the Maricopa real estate billionaire, and you said, “How did you know?” I said, “Well, know what?” And it turned out that you had just passed a billion in total volume.
Steve Murray: Yeah, we looked at it this morning and we were at 1.4 billion. But the numbers have dropped off. The year before COVID, we did almost 700 transactions in Maricopa and we’d be thrilled to have 400 or 500 this year. I don’t know if we’ll get there or not. But we did pick up the contract for the city on the commercial side.
Rock Earle: I was Mr. Hidden Valley for a long time, doing land brokerage and investment way before you even thought about getting into the business. And there came a day when I decided to come to Casa Grande because it was a real city. It had freeways, and it had stuff that Maricopa didn’t.
And I think it’s safe to say that 30 years after that decision, I might’ve made the wrong decision. Because Maricopa had nothing to start with, they invented everything new. In Casa Grande, we cling to all of our old crap, and it’s not all good. And I’ve been involved in economic development quite heavily, as you know, and I’m not pleased at all with the direction we’re taking there.
Casa Grande’s elected officials seem to have a problem with finding the money to grow —- that is, investing in vital infrastructure. Where Maricopa has a basic property tax rate of $3.6427 per $100 of valuation, Casa Grande is stuck at just under $1 — and you get what you pay for. And CG clings to its “legacy,” which is just an easy way to deny new, contemporary types of development. It’s just “heads-in-sand” mode, whereas Maricopa knows things cost money, and they just find it AND deploy it.
Maricopa has higher tax rates. You probably have slightly higher real estate values, and you have new stuff. You have stuff everywhere. You have rec centers, you have libraries, you have parks, you have new roads, you have a water and wastewater utility that is workable, and they help growth and make growth happen unlike our local situation. And you look like a genius in retrospect. What’s it been, 15 years now of really strong heavy growth there? Tell us your perspective on all that.
Steve Murray: We didn’t have a grocery store. But Hidden Valley and Thunderbird Farms, that area was very good to us. And that’s all we had, so that’s what we did. But along came the city and Mike Ingram with Rancho El Dorado and everybody. When the subdivisions took off we ended up with some good residential areas. So all in all, the City of Maricopa’s growth has been incredible. The big issue of course is traffic. The 347’s a nightmare. But about five years ago we got a new city manager and that was the difference.
Rock Earle: Ricky Horst. Absolute dynamo.
Steve Murray: Rick of course came in, and he’s experienced and he’s active. He answers his phone, and as far as commercial development goes he’s just incredible. We’d been trying to get a hotel there for I don’t know how long, and I had a client walk in on a Friday and said, “I want to build a hotel here, but I’m not dealing with this city. I tried last year but I gave up.” And I said, “Well, we’ve got a new city manager, let’s call him.” And I called Rick up and they did that deal, they were closed on Fridays, and Rick met us there on Friday and they had a deal done by Friday afternoon. That was the La Quinta Inn and Suites.
And Rick basically said, “You’ll be in it in a year if you do your part.” And he was. They moved it through permitting. I don’t think we had to rezone it, if I remember right, and it’s there. And that’s the way it’s been in general. We just sold the piece of property that the overpass went through to a multifamily builder, I think it was 14 acres. And at the end, just before we closed, Global Water basically came up and said, “We can’t get enough water over there.” And I called Rick up and he goes, “Well, I’ll be back with you, but let me get with Global.” And we got water. And it’s because he is about income for the city. He knows the tax situation, he knows the tax benefits, and he’s been good for Maricopa.
Rock Earle: OK, that’s a perfect place to start talking about economic development. And the time Ricky’s been here and the Maricopa Economic Development Agency (MEDA) years, but let’s start it now and work our ways backward. The city just spent $60 million of cash that they had in the bank to buy two really critical pieces of land that they’re making an industrial park out of. Now that’s extraordinary. I don’t know of any other cities myself that I work in that would do that.
Tell us about the economic development environment that’s been driven by Ricky and Christian Price, and then tell us about the new city manager and how it comes to be that there’s an environment where the city can spend $60 million on land.
Steve Murray: First of all, before Rick was here, MEDA was here and they didn’t do much. And then (former Maricopa mayor) Christian Price got involved a couple of years ago, and he’s a very capable guy, but his last update to the city on MEDA was, he’s flying all over, he is working on all this stuff, and he’s saying that we don’t have 50,000-square-foot buildings with the power and everything, so we don’t have the product that they need. And at the end, the last 20 minutes, he apologized for not getting anything done. So now Rick has stepped down as city manager, and they’re also bringing Christian into the city. So there’s going to be two of them, with slightly different titles, doing the same thing. (Editor’s note: Rick Horst, Economic Opportunity — Chief Economic Strategy Officer | Christian Price, Economic Opportunity — Chief Economic Development Officer.)
Rock Earle: Tell us about Ben Bitter, the new city manager.
Steve Murray: I’ve been with him, met him. At the last City Council meeting, I think it was the first time he was actually on his own up there, and I was impressed. He was knowledgeable, seemed proactive about getting things done. So the little contact I’ve had with him has been good. Rick’s training him or whatever, mentoring him for a certain period of time.
Bea Lueck: And Ben’s been with Maricopa as an assistant city manager for a few years. So he’s not brand new off the street. He has insight.
Rock Earle: What can you tell us about the new industrial park? Are there any users on the horizon?
Steve Murray: I don’t know. I’m sure he has got them… He’s got to have hundreds of them in his telephone. But which ones, I don’t know. I think the Casa Grande things bothered everybody in Maricopa a little bit. We got left behind in regards to industrial.
Rock Earle: Well, you’re getting all the rooftops; we’re getting all the plants.
On another economic development topic, I have the opinion that the Ak-Chin community has been a really positive thing for that end of the county. What is your experience?
Steve Murray: Absolutely. They brought the road in first of all. They improved the road into Maricopa years before the subdivisions were here when the casino opened. They’ve always been our major employer. They’ve got great benefits, retirement. They provide jobs, good retail traffic, and we didn’t have a hotel forever. And their farming is a big part of the economy in Maricopa.
Bea Lueck: And they’ve been good neighbors, financially supporting the endeavors of the City of Maricopa.
Steve Murray: Everybody talks about Copper Sky, and the tribe finished it. They gave $10 million at the end to finish it or it might not be here now. They’ve been a big part of why Maricopa’s grown. Anybody who doesn’t realize that wasn’t here in the beginning.
Rock Earle: Speaking of Copper Sky, tell us about the impact of all the public infrastructure in Maricopa, the parks and other things.
Steve Murray: It’s ongoing. I go to the council meetings whenever I can. But the dog parks, we’ve had a few discussions because they improved the dog park, they made it smaller but they’re doing three new ones in place of it. The walking trails that are going in are just amazing. They’re building that stuff right now. If we get a residential client in, we always want them to go to Copper Sky.
I don’t know if this surf park’s going to go, but that’s not a city facility. The schools are all new. I can’t think of what else we would need. I mean, the senior citizen building’s new, the library’s new, and they paid cash for all of that. At the last meeting, it was interesting, they made a comment about the new court building they built. Rick’s comment was, “We not only built it in the eight months it took, we paid cash for it and we were under budget.”
Rock Earle: In Casa Grande, everyone’s always complaining about taxes. And we can’t have anything new because Maricopa’s property tax rate is four times Casa Grande’s, and I’d never hear anyone in Maricopa complaining about it. That stuff costs money. And you have the city leaders that are willing to say that and back it up and build new stuff.
Bea Lueck: Well, since the incorporation in 2003, the City of Maricopa started with zero for anything. City Hall was on wheels. It was a series of modular buildings. And then they built a city hall that’s a work of art outside of the general city area. The citizenry in Maricopa have voiced their opinion to the elected officials. We want these things. And the elected officials and the citizenry are smart enough to understand if you want something, you have to pay for it. So they tax themselves.
Steve Murray: And the other thing is they’ve done a lot for the older areas in Maricopa. They’ve cleaned the streets up. They’ve put fencing in for the homes. They’ve done a lot to clean up the older part of Maricopa. And there’s more coming.
Rock Earle: You’re a successful guy. It’s been a privilege knowing you for these almost 30 years. Tell us the truth according to Steve. Give us a general overview.
Steve Murray: I think the growth’s going to continue in Maricopa. We are jealous of the industrial that Casa Grande’s got, I mean everybody. And we’ve got clients that own property out there that we’d certainly like to be involved in. But our biggest issue is we’ve got to get the 347 squared away. And Maricopa, Casa Grande, we’re both creating a traffic nightmare between us. It’s a very dangerous road right now. It’s getting loaded up, and a lot of it’s going to be trucking. It already is.
Bea Lueck: Well, we will point out that the Maricopa-Casa Grande Highway in the City of Maricopa is four lanes wide and Casa Grande’s portion is not.
Steve Murray: Maricopa is going to go west. They’re actively trying to annex some stuff out west. So, the growth is going to be west and south. That’s the only way it can go. And those are both in their planning area. So hopefully we’ll see that happen. It’s certainly coming.
