Celebrating 50 years: Key businesses put OV on the map

By Dave Perry, for the Town of Oro Valley

Tom Kibler (pictured) was working in the maintenance department at The Sheraton El Conquistador on Dec. 1, 1982, the day Oro Valley’s signature resort booked its first room night.

That room, since renumbered, was 1409, he recalled.

Kibler was all of 25, fresh out of upstate New York, and may not have recognized the significance of that reservation.

“It was always our salvation,” town co-founder and 12-year mayor Steve Engle said of the 428-room resort known today as El Conquistador Tucson, A Hilton Resort. Small, fledgling Oro Valley was close to “going in the red,” co-founder Jim Kriegh said in Jim Williams’ book “Oro Valley, The First Fifty Years.”

Permitting and plan review for the resort were fast-tracked, because Oro Valley needed the sales tax revenue generated by hotel guests to survive. When it opened, the Sheraton “turned the financial picture of the town around,” Kriegh would say. Williams writes it “may have had the greatest impact” of any business on Oro Valley.

Among Oro Valley’s nearly 700 businesses, two others rank with El Conquistador Tucson as employers of considerable importance in the town’s first half-century.

Ventana Medical Systems, now Roche Tissue Diagnostics, opened its doors in Oro Valley in 2001. Ventana, a leader in cancer diagnostic technology, put Oro Valley on the bioscience map. The Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche purchased Ventana in 2008, amplifying Ventana’s reach across the planet. Today, Roche Tissue Diagnostics is Oro Valley’s largest employer and southern Arizona’s biggest bioscience company, with approximately 1,700 people working on its expansive – and expanding, into the former Icagen building – 118-acre Innovation Park campus.

Northwest Medical Center Oro Valley opened for business in February 2005 just down the hill from Ventana. Today, more than 770 employees at renamed Oro Valley Hospital and its related, local Northwest Healthcare system facilities take care of the community... and have room to grow.

When the El Conquistador opened 42 years ago, “the only thing in Oro Valley was the Highlands Trailer Park,” said Kibler. “I just thought it was cool to be here.” He soon rose to director of facilities, a position he held until his retirement in November 2022.

“I loved it, loved it, my job, and this place,” said Kibler. “We had the best resort in Tucson, and it probably still is.”

No setting can compete with El Conquistador’s place at the foot of the Santa Catalina Mountains. Early on, Kibler and his co-workers scanned Pusch Ridge with binoculars to get a glimpse of big horn sheep. On a tough day, he would “take a golf cart out back, and just stare up there. And guys would jump off that cliff with their hang gliders.”

In 1982, Pusch View Lane ran directly through the CDO Wash, without a bridge. When it rained, Kibler would have to drive around it to get to work. It rained heavily in fall 1983, when Tucson flooded. “Nobody could go home,” Kibler said. “You had to stay and work. We couldn’t stop the water, and we needed more people. The rains went on for three days, the problems went on for weeks.”

After the rains fell, big shows and personalities flowed through the resort. The San Francisco 49ers football team. Lt. Col. Oliver North, he of the 1980s Iran-Contra affair, and all of 5-foot-5. Mel Gibson, the Australian actor, once asked Kibler “how you doin’, mate?” Sally Field “didn’t want anybody talking to her,” he remembered. “Willie Nelson spent a lot of time here.”

Kibler’s job “was making it pretty for everyone who wanted to come here, and making sure everything worked,” he said. “We wanted people to walk out of here and say, ‘this is the best place I’ve ever been.’ It was always ‘mi casa es su casa.’” My house is your house.

“In hospitality, it’s the people,” Kibler said. “What’s more important than that?”

Sometimes overlooked is the enormous copper mural above El Conquistador Tucson’s open lobby. The artwork, created by Dutch artist and Oro Valley resident Anke Van Dun, may be “the largest copper mural” in the world, Kibler said. Its two main panels are at least 12 feet tall and 20 feet wide, covering a high wall with patinaed and polished copper sheep, birds, cowboys, cacti, and mountains.

“It’s a neat place,” Kibler said of El Conquistador. “It has a lot of cool history.” 

Dr. Thomas Grogan was working as a sometimes-frustrated pathologist at the University of Arizona when he drew up the “architecture of the gizmo,” a machine that could more quickly diagnose cancer in suspect tissue samples.

It took years of toil by many to bring the “gizmo,” and its related chemistry and analysis, to market. Today, Roche Tissue Diagnostics produces instruments and companion diagnostic tests used across the world. Technology, tools, and tests imagined and created in Oro Valley touch the lives of millions of people each year. If you’ve ever had a biopsy, chances are your results were determined using an instrument and test built by Roche.

In his suspenseful memoir, “Chasing the Invisible,” Dr. Grogan describes in fascinating detail how it all came to be. He highlights a Ventana culture of

cohesion, hustle, collective intelligence, “aha” moments, and alliance among passionate people doing battle with cancer. In a 2021 interview, Dr. Grogan came to believe “we had a soul, a collective sense of value,” as a company. “We were doing something very important.”

Eventually, the world recognized Ventana’s paradigm-shifting innovation. Excited, curious customers wanted to see where it came from.

In Ventana’s early days, “we rented a series of small open spaces, almost garage-like spaces” across Tucson, Dr. Grogan said.

“We needed to move away from being… next to the wastewater treatment plant,” he said. “We looked for the place that was the most becoming environment, and that was Oro Valley.”

A hospital is “really important, critical in fact, from an economic development perspective,” asserts Brian Sinotte, market CEO for Northwest Healthcare.

“New employers ask, ‘how’s the healthcare; what’s it like?’” he said.

At Oro Valley Hospital, that care is exceptional, based upon patient satisfaction surveys that are “off the charts good,” Sinotte said.

The transplanted Minnesotan points to three areas of clinical excellence at the hospital.

Its 17-bed behavioral health unit, and 33-bed skilled nursing unit, are each “unique to our health system.” And the hospital is “extremely great at orthopedic surgery,” Sinotte said. It could be called “Ortho Valley Hospital,” he quipped, because of its high-quality orthopedic care delivered by skilled providers using the latest technology.

As with Dr. Grogan at Ventana, Sinotte speaks glowingly about “the culture of family” at the hospital. “You can feel it when you walk the halls. People are here 24/7, ready to take care of you. They’re your friends and neighbors. That matters to me.

“What we’ve been able to build here, over time, the community can be really proud of,” Sinotte said. “It is a jewel, this hospital.”

It helps, too, that Oro Valley Hospital has “the most beautiful view of any hospital I’ve ever seen,” he noted. Don’t discount such aesthetics; art, which abounds at the hospital, is good for health, Sinotte said.

As he scans the region, “I can see where the population’s coming,” Sinotte said. “It’s coming up here, Oro Valley and Marana, and we’re the nearest hospital. Our services are meeting the now.” As the region grows, “we are well-positioned to grow with it. We are able to adapt for the future should we need a bigger boat.”