The show must go on... HBACA launched the Southwest Builders Show in 2001 as part of its 50th anniversary celebration. Initially called the Home Builders Expo, the excitement over the inaugural show was curtailed a bit as the event came just a few weeks after 9/11. In spite of this, the show did quite well with 119 exhibitors filling 138 booths, and 812 home building professionals in attendance, enough for HBACA members to ask the association to add the show to its annual calendar of events.
Over the next several years, improvements were made to the Home Builders Expo to ensure it continued to be a top drawing event for the home building community. One of these was the move of HBACA’s Annual Forecast Luncheon to the show in 2003. Also that same year, HBACA partnered with Southwest Putting Greens to add a centerpiece to the show floor – an indoor putting green!
And along with that came the show’s signature event – the annual putting contest which raises funds for HBACA’s official charity, Home Builders Care. The top prize in the contest each year is a vehicle should anyone be lucky enough to make the hole-in-one shot. And luck was on the side of Bruce Kerr of Merillat who walked away that year with a brand new Corvette Convertible! The addition of the Forecast Luncheon and putting contest helped show attendance grow to 1,500.
In 2005 the Home Builders Expo was rebranded as the Southwest Builders Show to become a more regional show, drawing attendees from Nevada, New Mexico and Utah in addition to Arizona. Today, the Southwest Builders Show is the largest business-to-business home building expo in the Southwest.
The Southwest Builders Show is hosted annually by the Home Builders Association of Central Arizona (HBACA). Located in Phoenix, Arizona, HBACA is the affiliate of the National Association of Home Builders that officially represents central Arizona’s home building community. For information on membership in the Home Builders Association of Central Arizona, please contact the association at 602.274.6545, or visit www.hbaca.org.
