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Shopping Centers Today -> March 2002
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ROY DRACHMAN, 95, INDUSTRY VISIONARY, CIVIC LEADER
By Donna Mitchell
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| In addition to his industry contributions, Roy Drachman (left) helped bring Major League Baseball spring training to Arizona. Here he is seen in 1948 with New York Yankees owner Del E. Webb (center) and team treasurer Robert Becker. |
Veteran developer and ICSC leader Roy P. Drachman, an innovator and philanthropist who helped bring thousands of jobs to Arizona, died Jan. 10. He was 95.
Drachman was ICSC’s third elected officer when he served as chairman from 1962 to 1963.
The pioneer is best remembered for his contributions both to the industry and to his state.
One of Drachman’s most significant innovations involved parking. He introduced methods to optimize the space allocated to cars, and in the early 1960s he also led a joint effort by ICSC and the Urban Land Institute to codify a formula now universally used across the country setting a ratio of parking spaces to retail area. Until then, chaos had reigned over the area.
“There were all kinds of parking-ratio formulas — say six cars for every thousand feet of jewelry store, one car for that amount of furniture store,” he told Nancy Cohen, author of ICSC’s soon-to-be published history of the shopping center industry, in an interview last year. “But back then, really, it was all guesswork.”
He built Arizona’s first air-conditioned mall and was also instrumental in bringing a Hughes Aircraft Co. missile plant to Tucson, the city of his birth. The plant, now run by Raytheon Co., became southern Arizona’s largest private employer. Drachman also helped found the Tucson Medical Center and played a leading role in bringing Major League Baseball spring training to Arizona in the 1940s.
The Arizona Daily Star called Drachman the most influential Tucsonan of the 20th century. In the 1960s he organized efforts to issue bonds to pay for new streets, water lines and schools, which changed the face of Tucson.
Drachman donated millions of dollars to the University of Arizona, Tucson, and played a prominent role in founding the Arizona Prevention Center, which studies public health issues; the College of Medicine; and the Institute for Land and Regional Development Studies, all at the university. He funded a scholarship program at the UA College of Architecture, and his name is on the school’s track-and-field facility. In 1985 the university awarded him an honorary Doctor of Laws degree and last summer recognized his lifetime contributions by naming the future home of the College of Public Health after him. Drachman Hall, for which construction is to begin in the fall, will be a gateway anchoring the entrance to the Arizona Health Sciences Center campus.
A retail development innovator, Drachman pioneered several key shopping center concepts. In the early 1960s, teaming up with Del Webb Corp., a Phoenix-based developer of senior communities, Drachman built the Chris-Town Mall in Phoenix, the state’s first air-conditioned center: It was a hit in the hot, dry climate of Arizona.
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Drachman helped launch FedMart Corp. with entrepreneur Sol Price, who later created The Price Club and merged it with Costco Wholesale Corp. In 1958 Drachman also launched The Realty Digest, a newsletter covering the Tucson real estate market, which he wrote and produced sporadically until 1993.
Drachman also left an indelible mark on ICSC. Among other things, he persuaded ICSC’s board to hold the Spring Convention in Las Vegas for the first time, in 1976, recalled Albert Sussman, ICSC’s chief staff officer from 1958 to 1985.
“There was a lot of opposition at the time,” Sussman recalled. “He convinced us to try it. And we did. And it worked.”
Drachman also applied his business talents to much besides retail, and his influence extended far beyond his home state. He was one of the original partners of Ramada Inns. He served as president of the Urban Land Institute from 1970 to 1973 and as president of the Counselors of Real Estate in 1967, when it was called the American Society of Real Estate Counselors.
“Roy was one of the most respected and highly sought-after individuals,” said Wayne Doran, a vice president of Ford Motor Co. and past chairman of Ford Motor Land Development Corp. Doran recalled Drachman’s consultation on redevelopment projects in Barcelona, Spain, in preparation for the 1992 Olympic Games there, as well as his advice to Ford to build a plant in Hermosillo, Mexico.
Born in 1906, six years before Arizona became a state, he quickly earned a reputation as one of Tucson’s bedrock citizens. He launched his retail real estate career by managing Tucson’s first retail property, Pueblo Gardens. In 1944 he developed Swanway Plaza, a residential and retail complex, also in Tucson. He established Tucson-based Drachman Realty Co. in 1946 to focus on commercial development primarily in Tucson and remained active with the company until last year.
“He had a very keen and creative mind. And wherever he went, he would open doors,” Sussman said. “Roy Drachman was one of the finest people I’ve ever met in my life. He was a wonderful human being.”
Drachman is survived by his wife, Sally; two children; seven grandchildren; and 21 great-grandchildren.
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