Mike Liddiard

Mike Liddiard distinguished himself as one Pankow’s most valuable superintendents.

He began his career with Pankow in 1967. While on his way from Utah, where he had been working as a carpenter in residential construction, to a project in Alaska, Liddiard found work on the Pankow job site in Bellevue, Washington. Crews under the direction of Alan Murk were constructing a 13-story office building for Winmar, the real estate arm of Safeco Insurance and Pankow’s most important client for two decades.

After the completion of that project, in 1968, Liddiard relocated to the job site of San José Plaza, where Pankow constructed two office buildings and a parking structure for the telephone company. Alan Murk was Liddiard’s superintendent and mentor on these projects.

Liddiard got his first opportunity as superintendent on the Portland West parking garage project in Portland, Oregon. The project was completed in 1978. That same year, Liddiard oversaw the addition of three stories to an existing 4-story parking garage that Pankow had completed for the University of Southern California. Subsequently, Liddiard supervised the construction of parking garages for Kaiser Permanente hospitals in Hayward, Oakland, and Walnut Creek, all in Northern California.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, Liddiard supervised the construction of several of Pankow’s most challenging and high-profile projects, including 2101 Webster Street, an office tower in downtown Oakland; a fitness center and parking structure for the YMCA, also in Oakland; Marathon Plaza, a twin-tower office complex in San Francisco; the Resort at Squaw Peak; and the Waikiki Landmark, a twin-tower luxury condominium at the “gateway” to the Waikiki district in Honolulu.

In 1993 Dean E. Stephan, president of the company, asked a cadre of veteran superintendents, including Liddiard, Tony Giron, Jack Grieger, and Red Metcalf, to retire as part of cost cutting program in the context of a severe downturn in work, particularly in Hawaii.