Casa Grande, Bianco Farms and Attesa: History, Still in The Making

There are a number of reasons why Danrick Builders chose 2360 acres of land near Casa Grande as the home for Attesa, our new motorsports technology/private club community scheduled to break ground in 2017.

Casa Grande is where Interstate 8 ends at I-10, just about midway between Phoenix and Tucson. The city is in the heart of Pinal County, founded as a mining and farming community and now bristling with growth in other industries. It’s in the center of the Arizona Sun Corridor, where the annual temperature is 70 degrees on average and rainfall is about 9” per year. With no snow, no earthquakes, little risk for tornadoes and abundant sunshine.

But how did the city of Casa Grande come to be? What made people settle there in the first place?

Flash back to 1878, when the Southern Pacific railroad began laying track from Yuma, heading east, to eventually link the west coast port of Los Angeles to New Orleans. They started in November but quit in May of ’79 due to the oppressive heat. The place they stopped, where the workers set up camp to wait out the summer, was called ‘Terminus,’ from the Latin word for boundary or end.

In January of 1880 work resumed. Eventually the predominantly Chinese labor crew moved on, leaving behind a settlement with just three residents and five buildings. Later that same year Southern Pacific executives officially re-named the town ‘Casa Grande,’ the Spanish translation for ‘Great House’ in honor of the prehistoric Hohokam native American structure and ruins nearby. A post office was established in September of 1881.

Casa Grande attracted miners at first, early entrepreneurs searching for copper, gold and mercury in order to find their fortunes. Then farming and ranching took over as landowners grew everything from alfalfa, barley, corn and cotton to fruits, vegetables, chickens and livestock. Restaurants, hotels and retailers sprung up, as did schools, housing, roads and new infrastructure.

Fast forward to the start of World War II, when an unknown to this day Japanese American celery farmer in southern California was relocated to an internment camp outside of Casa Grande. While he was away another SoCal farming family, the Bianco’s from Brentwood (yes, the same Brentwood that’s surpassed Beverly Hills as the most expensive and exclusive neighborhood in Los Angeles), took care of his farm while he was imprisoned.

After the war ended, when the poor farmer of Japanese descent was finally freed and returned to California, he told Joseph Bianco and his sons-of-Italian-immigrants brothers, of the great farming opportunities in Arizona.

In 1945 Joe and his brothers brothers purchased 5500 acres about seven miles west of downtown Casa Grande. For the next fifty years they successfully farmed the land raising diversified crops and breeding Charolais cattle.  They were also active in church, community and political activities.   They were loved and respected in Casa Grande.

Joe Bianco passed away in 2011. Four years later, in 2015, Danrick Builders purchased the last remaining parcel of the family’s original farmland as the home for Attesa.

The Attesa team has great respect and admiration for Casa Grande, its history and especially what it is today: A thriving, diverse community of more than 50,000 in the heart of Pinal County, renowned for agriculture, manufacturing, tourism, technology, a temperate climate and nice people.

We can’t wait to build Arizona’s next great landmark and make Casa Grande equally famous as a motorsports, transportation technology, industrial, residential and hospitality/entertainment destination.

Attesa. Soon to be central Arizona’s premier community, at 7800 S. Bianco Road, a half mile south of Interstate 8, two miles east of Montgomery Road, on what locals will always refer to as “the old Bianco farms land.”