Instant City

"I've never been happier. I wouldn't trade places with God." So says George M. Foster, 57, who sold his flourishing Los Angeles ice cream and catering business two years ago to become the operator of a boat marina at the fledgling Arizona town of Lake Havasu City. Foster's spirit is typical of the 2,500 settlers in three-year-old Havasu, an "instant city" built by the California-based McCulloch Oil Corp. along part of the 45-mile lake behind Parker Dam on the lower Colorado River.

Located 235 miles due east of Los Angeles, and surrounded by miles of scorching and sparsely inhabited desert, Havasu stands in an unlikely place for anything as ambitious as a new town. Indeed, the rest of the nation's two dozen such communities are sprouting close to major population centers. Yet McCulloch Oil reported last week that

Havasu land sales rose to $18 million in 1966, accounting for the bulk of the company's $23 million revenues and much of its $2,800,000 profits.

The Gamble. Havasu (the name means "blue water" in Navaho) lures newcomers with its sun (annual rainfall is a mere five inches), space, desert air and trout-filled lake, made to order for thousands of fishermen, campers, water skiers and motorboat racers. It was the lake that caught the fancy of McCulloch Oil President Robert Paxton McCulloch, now 56, when he first flew over it in 1958. McCulloch, who is also the world's largest manufacturer of chain saws and No. 3 maker of outboard motors, was searching for a freshwater site on which to test his engines. After buying out a fishing camp, he quickly built a $250,000 test facility--now expanded into a three-building plant where 180 employees produce chain-saw components and outboard-engine coils, carburetors and regulators.

Along with the fishing camp came a patchwork holding of 3,530 acres and an abandoned World War II airstrip. Before McCulloch was able to buy an adjoining 12,990 acres (at $73 an acre) from the state of Arizona, he had to convince state officials that his plan would increase tax revenues. To create 25-sq.-mi. Havasu City, he gambled $500,000 on surveys, plans and engineering, even though the prospect looked so risky that C. V. Wood, 46, onetime Disneyland general manager and Convair chief industrial engineer, who is now Havasu City's master planner, told him bluntly: "You're out of your mind."

McCulloch's town began inauspiciously enough in 1964, with 40 dwelling units, three miles of unpaved road, and a population of 160. Today, it has grown into a palm-dotted development of 550 homes and apartments, 54 miles of paved streets, 105 businesses including a bank, a shopping center, a pizza parlor, bowling alley and six restaurants, and a golf course. Though most of the carefully controlled architecture is uninspired, Wood added a Disneyland touch to the Lake Havasu Hotel by running a waterfall over its roof.

Private Airline. Mindful that the inflated claims of fly-by-night operators have made potential buyers increasingly wary of desert land ventures, McCulloch insists on a "see-before-you-buy" policy. To bring prospects (28,000 last year) from such cities as Cleveland, Chicago, Seattle, Dallas and Kansas City for a two-day visit to Havasu City, the company operates its own private airline of five prop-driven, four-engine Constellations. The cost to McCulloch: $1,000,-000 a year. The cost to the prospective buyer: nothing. When the visitor becomes a paying customer, though, McCulloch not only charges a substantial $3,000 to $18,000 for one-quarter and one-third acre residential lots--a price that discourages speculators--but requires buyers to put at least 10% down, pay off the balance in 81 months.

"Our dream," says Havasu's founder, "is a population of 60,000 by 1980--and I think it's attainable." That would make Havasu Arizona's third largest city (after Phoenix and Tucson). Whether the desert town grows that fast depends largely on how much industry McCulloch can attract to provide jobs. Last week a San Bernardino, Calif., printing company announced plans to move to Havasu, and there are other promising prospects waiting in the wings. Meanwhile, the local branch of the Arizona employment service has no trouble finding 50 jobs a month for new arrivals. Beyond all that activity, simply as a resort and retirement center, Lake Havasu City has already transformed a forbidding abode of cactus and jack rabbits into the Southwest's most surprising oasis.

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