Charles Pankow, 83; Founded Firm That Built MTA Complex
Charles Pankow, founder and chairman of the board of one of the nation’s leading design-build firms and a pioneer in concrete-forming technology, has died. He was 83.
Pankow died of natural causes Jan. 12 at his home in Altadena, according to a company spokesman.
Since its 1963 founding in his garage in that community, Charles Pankow Builders has constructed more than 1,000 structures across the country.
Its largest project, completed in 1996 at a cost of more than $220 million, was the Metropolitan Transportation Authority headquarters next to Union Station in Los Angeles -- a 28-story office building, parking structure and what is called the East Portal, an entrance to the subway system.
Among other projects have been the Metropolitan Water District headquarters, also adjacent to Union Station; the University of Hawaii’s sports arena; and Honolulu Park Place, a residential tower.
The Altadena-headquartered company is working on White Memorial Medical Center, a Boyle Heights complex that is replacing some buildings and upgrading others.
The firm is also involved in Sunset & Vine, a Hollywood retail and residential project.
“I wasn’t thinking about how big it would get,” Pankow said of his company in a Pasadena Star-News interview in September.
“I was looking for an opportunity to do what we [wanted] to do.”
When he founded the firm, the design-build approach that he followed was in its infancy in the U.S. construction industry.
Pankow became an outspoken champion of the process, in which the builder participates in the early planning stages to help guide and set costs for a project.
His company is considered a national leader in the use of concrete, holding two patents in concrete pre-casting and job-site automation.
The Paramount, a 39-story residential tower his firm completed in San Francisco in 2002, is the tallest precast concrete structure on the West Coast.
It was built with a new structural-framing system, developed by an industry consortium led by Charles Pankow Builders, that is said to be far more earthquake-resistant than traditional systems.
In 1999, the innovative Pankow was recognized by the Engineering News-Record as one of the Top Six World Builders during the magazine’s 125-year history.
Born in South Bend, Ind., Pankow began his career in high school, doing building work with his father, a construction company engineer, during summer breaks.
He spent three years studying civil engineering at Purdue University before serving in the Navy during World War II. He earned a bachelor of science degree in civil engineering in 1947 from Purdue, which presented him with an honorary doctorate in engineering 36 years later.
Pankow was a leading member of more than a dozen national associations and academies and helped form the Southern California chapter of the American Concrete Institute, for which he served as president in 1980.
He was also a noted art collector, specializing in Egyptian, Chinese and Russian artifacts and assembling one of the largest private collections of Russian and Greek icons in the nation.
Pankow is survived by his wife of 58 years, Doris; sons Charles III “Chip,” Richard and Stephen; a daughter, Betsy Tegatz; nine grandchildren; a brother, James; and a sister, Mary Brothers.
Donations may be made to the City of Hope National Medical Center, the UC San Francisco Medical Center-Kidney Transplant Unit or the California Pacific Medical Center Foundation.
