Alan D. Murk

In 1947 Alan Murk began his career with Peter Kiewit Sons’ as a carpenter out of the union hall. His father already had worked many years with the company and, indeed, would spend the rest of his career with Kiewit. The younger Murk became a valuable superintendent within the Arcadia, California-based Kiewit building division established by Charlie Pankow, and then followed Pankow out of the firm in 1963. As a superintendent with Charles Pankow, Inc., Murk mentored many of the individuals who participated in this oral history project. He finished his career with Pankow, retiring in 1991 as operations manager.

In the six years that Charlie Pankow headed the Arcadia-based building division, Murk was superintendent on several significant projects built in San Diego, including the El Cortez Hotel Convention Center, completed in 1960; the First and C Building, the tallest reinforced concrete structure in a Universal Building Code Seismic Zone 3 area, at 250 feet; and the Hillcrest North Medical Center. The latter two projects in particular demonstrated the effectiveness of a contractor self-performing concrete work, which in these cases included slipforming the service cores and precasting concrete structural and architectural elements. Self-performing concrete work would become a hallmark of the Pankow firm.

Murk joined many of his colleagues in the Arcadia-based building division in leaving Kiewit with Charlie Pankow. As Murk notes in this interview, his father warned him against doing so, for the new Pankow company would surely fail, he predicted.

Charlie Pankow assigned Murk to supervise the company\’s first project, MacArthur Broadway Center. Completed in 1965 near downtown Oakland, California, for Edmond E. Herrscher, the 400,000-square-foot project featured a six-story office building and rooftop parking over a shopping center.

Before the completion of that project, Charlie Pankow redeployed Murk to San José, California, where he worked on four office buildings that were completed for developers Roy Demmon and Derk Hunter between 1964 and 1967.

Murk then relocated to Bellevue, Washington, to oversee the completion of an office building for Winmar, the real estate arm of Safeco Insurance, which became Pankow’s most important client for more than two decades.

In terms of professional satisfaction, Murk points to his contribution to completing two large office buildings in San Francisco for Pacific Telephone & Telegraph and AT&T. These projects, completed in 1975 and 1977, respectively, were development efforts of Charlie Pankow and Russell J. Osterman, who was one of the original partners in Charles Pankow, Inc.

In 1981 operations manager Ralph Tice, one of the founders of Charles Pankow, Inc., retired from the company after suffering, but surviving, a heart attack. Charlie Pankow tapped Murk to replace him. He thus became the firm’s third operations manager, and served in that capacity for the next decade.