Lee Sandahl

Lee Sandahl’s business relationship with Charlie Pankow began while the latter headed Peter Kiewit Sons’ building division in Arcadia, California. Sandahl’s firm, Key Mechanical Industries (KMI), which he and Robert Heisler established in 1955, was the mechanical subcontractor on many Kiewit and Pankow projects.

Sandahl studied mechanical engineering with Heisler at the University of Southern California. He graduated in 1949; Heisler graduated the following year and took a job with General Electric in Schenectady, New York.

Sandahl and Heisler renewed their ties when the latter was assigned to GE’s motor plant in San José, California. Sandahl was working for a firm that supplied parts to the factory. Because of his desire to stay in California, Heisler soon left GE to take a job with an air conditioning supply firm in southern California. In 1953 Heisler recruited Sandahl into the firm. Two years later, Heisler and Sandahl acquired a bankrupt firm and established Key Refrigeration, based in Santa Fe Springs, an industrial suburb in Los Angeles County. They later changed the company’s name to Key Mechanical Industries.

Between 1957 and 1963, KMI was the mechanical subcontractor on several projects built by Charlie Pankow’s building division, including the American Cement Building in Los Angeles and the Air Defense Command Headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Both Sandahl and Heisler shared Charlie Pankow’s design-build approach to construction. As members of the design-build team, they suggested several innovative ways of incorporating HVAC systems into the design of tall concrete commercial structures.

Over three decades, KMI was the mechanical subcontractor many of the Pankow company’s projects, including most of the office buildings and shopping centers constructed for Winmar, the real estate arm of SAFECO Insurance and Pankow’s most important client for two decades. During this time, Pankow accounted for 25 percent or more of KMI’s business.

KMI evolved as a holding company for a number of entities, including Key Air Conditioning, KMI Engineers, Key Industrial Company, and Key Mechanical Service Company. Beginning in the mid-1990s, Heisler and Sandahl sold these firms to key employees. At the time of this interview, they remained interested in a single entity: Shoreline, Washington-based Northwest Mechanical.