ASU professor's neglect irks Superior officials

Glenn A. Wilt Jr. has taught scores of Arizona State University students about finance and real estate investment during his 45 years as a business professor.

But officials in Superior are puzzled at what guided Wilt to purchase many of the tiny mining town's abandoned theaters, shops and houses only to neglect the structures.

The professor has amassed a vast real estate portfolio the past two decades, including most of downtown Superior. But dozens of his buildings are collapsing; a few have become unsalvageable ruins.

"He seems to feel these falling-down structures are going to be beautiful someday and that there will magically be the money," said Todd Pryor, Superior's fire marshal.

Property records show that Wilt purchased most of the land and buildings in Superior for a relatively low price. His motives for doing so remain elusive.

Wilt did not return repeated calls for comment. Attempts to reach him in person at his university office and at his Tempe home were unsuccessful. A brass plate mounted on the front door of Wilt's home says, "Sorry we're temporarily out."

Wilt lists of at least 24 of his properties under the names of various corporations, primarily the Superior Development Co. Wilt's partner in these businesses, Greg Rowles, did not return calls for comment.

A majority of the professor's Pinal County buildings have lost value because their brick walls crumbled and their roofs collapsed.

"It's a real enigma," said Paul Larkin, Pinal County's assessor. "I don't know what his game is. If he's waiting for things to improve he ought to be part of the renaissance, you know."

'ENOUGH IS ENOUGH'

Superior, home to 3,300 people, is nestled in the Pinal Mountains, almost 50 miles east of Mesa. The town was founded in the late 1800s as people arrived to work in the area's copper, silver and gold mines and built a number of the structures Wilt owns today.

Mining remains central to Superior's economic fortunes, as Resolution Copper Mining prepares to tap into what the company suspects is one of the continent's largest copper reserves.

In recent years, some Superior business owners and outside investors have tried to bring in tourism dollars by restoring downtown to the luster it had a century ago. The effort has failed, so far.

Mayor Michael O. Hing and other town officials blame Wilt and his shuttered buildings.

"I'm not here to tell people what they should be doing with their buildings," Hing said. "But now, enough is enough."

Bill Holmquist, the professor's most vocal critic, goes further.

"He's just killing this town, just killing it," said Holmquist, a movie construction coordinator and part-time Superior resident who refurbished and rents out several of the town's downtown buildings.

Holmquist's film credits include "There Will Be Blood" and "Rush Hour 2." He converted one of the town's early grocery stores into a set production studio.

Superior began enforcing its building code this year for the first time, spurred to action in large part by Wilt's deteriorating buildings.

Pryor found 36 fire department violations on Wilt's properties, ranging from overgrown weeds to buildings on the verge of collapse.

The town police department has cited the professor on five misdemeanor counts of failing to maintain his buildings, said Police Chief Lou Digirolamo. Wilt has not yet responded to the citations.

In its most significant action so far, last week the town spent $43,000 to demolish what remained of the Uptown Theatre, built around 1920 to provide Superior its first motion pictures.

Wilt bought the theater in 1995 for $25,000, according to Pinal County property records.

"If there is a health or safety issue, we don't just send a letter. We take immediate action," Digirolamo said.

The theater's roof collapsed in 2000, toppling one of its walls as well as the building next door. Various engineers and building inspectors had warned Wilt and town officials that the theater was unstable at least two years before that incident, town records show.

In March 1999, the National Investment Co., which owned the building next to the theater, got a court order requiring Wilt to stabilize the theater within 30 days.

Wilt failed to follow the order.

No one did anything to secure the structure during the next eight years, leaving its projection room, rows of seating and stage exposed to the elements. The professor repeatedly requested extensions to allow him to hire engineers and develop a plan for repairs; the town granted them or failed to enforce deadlines, records show.

Wilt regularly argued against removing the theater because "he did not think that demolishing the entire structure would be a wise idea, because it would leave a huge gap on the streetscape of Main St.," minutes from a town hearing in June show.

Town officials intend to put a tax lien on the theater's lot or to sue Wilt personally to recoup the cost of demolition, said Melanie Oliver, interim town manager.

The town has long been at a financial disadvantage because of wealthy real estate speculators.

Superior's yearly budget is less than $5 million, finance records show, and includes little money for legal battles with negligent property owners. Residents' median income is about half the national average, according to the 2000 census.

Still, Oliver said, the town has the funds to take Wilt to court.

PROFESSOR TURNED PRACTITIONER

Wilt moved to Arizona in 1963 after finishing his doctorate in finance, economics and statistics at the University of Michigan, according to his resume. He became a business professor teaching finance that same year.

Wilt, now partly retired, taught real estate finance classes for more than 30 years.

He continues to teach one course a semester on financial markets, ASU's class schedule shows.

Real estate speculators own a number of Superior's aging structures, but no one has bought property on the scale Wilt has.

The professor is Superior's second-largest property owner, behind only the Resolution Copper mine, Pryor said.

Hing said he asked Wilt to sell at least some of his properties two years ago. Wilt declined, the mayor said, and assured the mayor that when the time was right, he would sell off his real estate holdings.

At the time, Hing said he asked Wilt why he was keeping Superior's deteriorating structures. Wilt replied that it is cheaper to buy buildings for storage in Superior than it is to rent storage space in Phoenix, Hing said.

On several occasions earlier this year, some of Wilt's buildings appeared to be filled with a clutter of objects, including desks. The words "no trespassing" are spray-painted in red on each building; some also hold signs advertising them as available for rent, despite clear structural damage.

Superior is but one of the rural outposts in which Wilt has bought aging buildings.

The professor owns dozens of structures in Pinal and Gila counties, property records show. Nearly all are zoned as vacant or for farming, even those with buildings. Their values are low compared to their neighbors, which ensures that Wilt pays minimal property taxes.

For one storage building, records show that Wilt pays $313 a year for a 6,800-square-foot lot that would otherwise cost him thousands of dollars a year.

"Have you seen the buildings?" L. Paul Larkin, the Pinal County assessor, responded when asked about the valuations on Wilt's properties. "That's the reason the values are low. The buildings are condemned, or near condemned. Some are falling down."

Holmquist has lobbied hard for Larkin to raise Wilt's property valuations closer to those of his neighbors. That would sharply increase the professor's tax bill, which Holmquist hopes would entice Wilt to sell many of his buildings.

Larkin said there is nothing he can do, though he sympathizes with Holmquist.

'TEN YEARS LATER'

In 1996, director Oliver Stone hired Holmquist to build sets for the movie "U-Turn," part of which was filmed in downtown Superior.

Wilt opened the Uptown Theatre for the film crew. "We went inside and the projection room was intact," Holmquist said. "The screen was up. The seats were there. It was fine."

The theater's roof collapsed four years later, which exposed the interior to years of sun, wind and rain.

Before the town's wrecking crew arrived last week, weeds grew in the theater's aisles and a palm tree had displaced part of the front row.

Regardless, Wilt fought the theater demolition plans for months.

He filed appeals and reports from his own engineer arguing that the structure needed only a wood frame to make the structure safe, town records show.

Pryor's inspections found otherwise.

"It was a collapse hazard, and all of Main Street had to be evacuated," he said.

In fact, an outside building safety official recommended the same thing a decade ago.

Superior didn't have anyone on its staff qualified to inspect structures in 1998, when it received a complaint about the theater. So town officials sent photographs and video of the theater to Ibrahim Maslamani, then an inspector for Peoria.

Maslamani responded that the theater was a clear safety threat.

"Immediately, the public sidewalk adjacent to the building should be closed off to prevent possible injury to the public," Maslamani wrote Jan. 5, 1998, in a memo provided to Superior officials.

Maslamani, now the building inspection director for Atlanta, further advised the town to demolish or repair the theater within 30 days.

Neither Wilt nor town officials acted on the information. Oliver, Superior's interim town manager, began constructing a code compliance operation when she started in March.

The theater's demolition was a top priority, Oliver said.

"Ten years later, finally."