Robson builds career providing Ariz. homes

Ed Robson began his career as an Arizona developer in the mid-1960s by enticing people to drive to Bullhead City and look at mobile-home lots for a free tank of gas and an inexpensive camera. The marketing ploy worked. Robson and his partners sold hundreds of lots in the then-tiny town next to the Colorado River. They handed out 2,500 Kodak Instamatic cameras to people who made the drive. The group bought so many Kodaks that the camera company sent a salesman to Bullhead City to figure out what they were doing. Robson talked the Kodak salesman into buying a lot in the development. Robson learned about being a salesman from one of the best. He had just left Phoenix-based Del E. Webb Corp., where he learned to negotiate deals and plan for large developments from one of the top developers of the time. Del Webb, then-owner of the New York Yankees, would become synonymous with his Sun City retirement developments. A decade later, Robson opened Sun Lakes south of then-far-flung Chandler with two other former Webb executives. The project would directly compete with their former boss' popular Sun City in the far-northwest Valley. Webb died in 1974, before sales at Sun Lakes soared. Still, he will always be an important influence for Robson. "I can't say Webb was like a mentor to me, but I learned a heck of a lot from him," said Robson, who at 80 still works full time and makes the commute almost daily from his Biltmore-area Phoenix home to his office in Sun Lakes. "He was a tough, smart businessman. I am not that smart, but I can be pretty tough."

Click here to view this article from its source.