Word: blount
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...project will include 17 major buildings housing a medical center, a 4 million-volume library and seven col leges where Saudis will study disciplines ranging from dentistry and engineering to agriculture and marketing. Blount's first task will be to build a mini-city, complete with shopping center and hospital, to support 8,000 construction workers drawn largely from Turkey, Pakistan, Korea and the Philippines...
...Saudis change their specifications, they will pay no more than $1.7 billion, no matter what happens to the prices of labor, steel and concrete during the course of the 40-month project. In an era of runaway inflation, that was a risky deal, but it is one typical of Blount...
...native of Union Springs, Ala., Blount, 60, formed his company in 1946 after wartime service as a B-29 bomber pilot. Along with his brother Houston, who later left the business, he started by investing $28,000 to buy four Caterpillar earthmovers. Blount soon gained a national reputation for tackling jobs that were uniquely challenging and thus uncommonly profitable. Among his more memorable monuments: Kennedy Space Center's Launch Site 39A-from which the space shuttle Columbia took off, an underground convention center in Cleveland, atomic research laboratories at Oak Ridge, Tenn., and the Government's maximum-security...
...Those were the kinds of jobs we liked -complex, difficult and often one of a kind." Blount's willingness to sign contracts on a fixed-price basis, rather than on the usual cost-plus condition, attracted scores of inflation-wary customers...
...construction projects generously support Blount's Old South lifestyle. His version of Scarlett O'Hara's Tara is Wynfield, a rambling 140-acre estate near Montgomery, complete with a 19-room Georgian mansion, a swimming pool, stables and magnolia trees. The bright red hair that earned him the nickname of his youth is now sparse and streaked with gray, but the strapping, 6-ft. 2-in. Blount keeps trim with frequent tennis matches and ski trips to Vail, Colo. On jaunts to visit construction sites around the U.S., he sometimes personally pilots one of his company...