BUILDING INTEGRITY SINCE 1890

Sundt was founded in 1890 by Mauritz Martinsen Sundt, a Norwegian ship carpenter who immigrated to the United States as a teenager. The company's early projects were homes and farm structures in northern New Mexico. One of the first major projects was the Agua Pura Dam outside Las Vegas, New Mexico in 1910.

In 1929, the company ventured outside of New Mexico for the first time to build a Methodist Church in Tucson, Arizona. The project was directed by John Sundt, one of Mauritz's 12 children. John liked Tucson, and decided to stay. During the 1930s he bought out his father's interest, relocated the company to Tucson, and renamed it M.M. Sundt Construction Co.

In 1936, with the country in the grip of the Great Depression, M.M. Sundt was fortunate to obtain six projects at the University of Arizona in Tucson. They were funded by the Public Works Administration, a depression-era federal agency.

The next big undertaking for M.M. Sundt came in 1942, when the company was given the daunting task of building an entire town in New Mexico for a super-secret government project. In just 14 months Sundt built homes, research buildings, and the infrastructure to support a community of military and technical personnel. It wasn't until 1945 that the company learned the facility's true purpose. The project was Los Alamos, where the first atomic bomb was developed that ended World War II.

In the late 1940s, the pent-up demand for construction created by wartime restrictions caused a post-war boom, which lasted for several years. Sundt built more projects at the University of Arizona, in addition to a hotel and retail building in downtown Tucson. The company decided to close its construction office in New Mexico, and instead became a supplier of sand, aggregate and ready-mixed concrete to other contractors through a newly formed subsidiary, Albuquerque Gravel Products (AGP).

In 1952, Sundt diversified its operations by entering the heavy construction field. Its first project of this type was a new 14,000-foot runway at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base near Tucson. Over the ensuing years, M.M. Sundt would become one of the state's leading heavy construction contractors.

In 1957, Sundt's military expertise was again called into action for construction of the first underground ballistic missile launching facility at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, which later became the prototype for all Titan I Missile installations throughout the country.

The company ventured into the international arena in 1962 with the construction of sewage treatment facilities in Trinidad, West Indies. During the 1960s Sundt continued to be one of Arizona's top contractors, building highways, commercial buildings, schools, and medical facilities. Milestone projects built during this decade include the Kitt Peak Observatory in southern Arizona. In 1966, the company opened a regional office in Phoenix. Among that office's early projects were the Bureau of Indian Affairs Hospital and all of the structural concrete work for a large manufacturing facility for Western Electric, and the Phoenix headquarters of Empire Machinery Company. Shortly after John Sundt died in 1965, the company took its first steps to becoming an employee-owned corporation.

The 1970s were explosive years for the company, with more than 700 projects completed within the decade, including the relocation of the London Bridge to Lake Havasu, Arizona. Sundt also expanded its overseas operations, formed and acquired subsidiary companies and opened branch offices.

In 1972, after several successful joint-venture projects with the Novato, California-based C.R. Fedrick, Inc., the company was acquired as a wholly owned subsidiary. The company built water resource projects throughout northern California. Today this former subsidiary is the California office of Sundt's Heavy Civil Division.

The '70s also saw the company's largest international project, which involved the construction in Saudi Arabia of condominiums, detached homes, schools, and petroleum engineering facilities. This work lasted into the mid 1980s and had an estimated total value of $750 million.

Sundt's remarkable expansion continued during the 1980s. The company became a prominent industrial contractor, building major mining projects and power plant additions in Arizona and New Mexico. The company's many commercial projects included office buildings, medical facilities and educational projects in the Phoenix area. In Southern Arizona, Sundt built numerous projects, including the award-winning Loews Ventana Canyon Resort Hotel, and several buildings at the University of Arizona. The company's Highway Division was awarded several major Arizona freeway projects, and Sundt became known as one of the country's top contractors for slipformed concrete building cores. The company's growing portfolio of projects included several in Texas and a major hotel in Nevada. Sundt also entered the field of military family housing and added a new subsidiary, Ninteman Construction Co., Inc., a well known general contractor in San Diego. (Ninteman later became Sundt's Southern California office.)

During the 1990s the company continued its expansion into the California market by acquiring Earl Construction Company, which served clients in the Sacramento area. (It is now the company's Northern California office.) Thanks to its rapid growth, both geographically and in the types of projects it constructed, the company was consistently listed by ENR Magazine as one of the 100 largest contractors in the nation. The list of milestone projects grew substantially, among them Reach Four of the Arizona Canal Diversion Channel in Phoenix, major runways at the Austin Bergstrom International Airport and the Salt Lake City Airport, the Lovelock Correctional Facility in Nevada, the Bayview Military Family Housing complex for the Navy in California, and the US Embassy Secure Chancery Facilities in Moscow (with joint venture partners).

In the early years of the new century, Sundt added more landmark projects to its list of accomplishments, including the Apollo Riverpoint office complex in Phoenix, Mater Dei Catholic High School in San Diego, Oasis Water Campus Water Treatment Plant in Glendale, multiple sections of Phoenix's new light rail system, two buildings of the BioDesign Institute at Arizona State University, a major expansion of the Tucson International Airport Terminal, widening 13 miles of US 60 through Phoenix's East Valley, and the Westin Kierland Resort in Scottsdale. The company now operates throughout the United States, building a wide variety of projects for public and private clients.