Hugh Bishop Codding

Hugh Bishop Codding, for more than 60 years a larger-than-life figure in the economy and politics of Sonoma County, died Saturday
of pneumonia. He was 92.
Codding, generally credited with having altered the course of post-World War II Santa Rosa, became a legend in residential and commercial development in the 1950s and '60s constituting the quinetssential story of the regions building boom.
Ever controversial, Codding served two terms on the Santa Rosa City Council, winning both by the largest margins up to that time,
while spending not one cent on a campaign. He was the Mayor who presided at the city's 100th birthday celebration in 1968, but as a developer later filed lawsuits against the city that delayed the construction of Santa Rosa Plaza for 13 years.
Codding was the youngest child of George Codding, an insurance broker, and Ruby Jewell Codding Hall, an early feminist who was
the first woman to run for county supervisor, albeit unsuccessfully, in 1936.
He was proud of his pioneer ancestry. A great-grandmother was a member of the Donner Party, and his great-grandfather, Tennessee Bishop, owned a sheep ranch and was an early and controversial Sonoma County sheriff.
Codding was born on July 11, 1917, in Oakland and spent his childhood in Piedmont and on the family ranch in Covelo. There he enjoyed a kind of "Huck Finn" boyhood, learning hunting and fishing skills - which became his favorite recreation as an adult - from friends on the Round Valley Indian Reservation. The family moved to Santa Rosa when he was still in elementary school.
After his graduation from Santa Rosa High School in 1936, Codding worked for his plumber stepfather, David Hall, and took construction courses at night.
He honed his construction skills with the Navy Seabees in World War II, serving in the Pacific Theater, and was among the force
mobilized on Iwo Jima awaiting orders to invade Japan when atomic bombs were dropped at Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Japan surrendered.
Home from the service, he parlayed his $400 discharge pay into the developments that would result in the decentralization of Santa
Rosa.With his profits and a $10,000 bank loan, he built one of the first under-one-roof shopping centers in the state, taking the idea and name from Sacramento's Town & Country Village.
In 1949, he started construction on another, larger shopping center which opened in 1950 with a dozen businesses. He named it Montomery Village, after Billy Montgomery, the young sailor who was the first Santa Rosan to die in World War II, at Pearl Harbor.
His projects gained national attention for stunts like building an entire house in three hours and 18 minutes, or a church in five hours
and 16 minutes. Time magazine featured him as the wunderkind of the post-war boom.
He loved the attention and he loved stunts. He hired a flagpole sitter to promote Montgomery Village, and announced plans to put
his family cat into orbit when the Soviets launched a dog. He gave his friendly opponent, City Manager Sam Hood, a live ocelot as a
Christmas present and later bought a baby elephant as a political symbol of his chosen party when he was contemplating a run for
state Senate.
After a financial disaster which cost him ownership of a hotel before its completion and would have ended the Codding saga had
not his creditors been willing to compromise, Codding recovered to build the Coddingtown Shopping Center. Later enclosed, it became one of the first modern suburban malls on the West Coast and he brought such San Francisco retailers as Joseph Magnin and Roos-Atkins to what grew into a regional center.
The preceding two decades there had been a succession of savings and loans, title companies and a weekly newspaper as well as a half dozen of his own homes.
In 1996, at age 79, he ran again for Santa Rosa City Council, losing by 7,000 votes. His response when asked for reaction was vintage Codding: "I'm 60 percent relieved and 40 percent disappointed," he said. "It was a blow to my ego. But my mother always said,'You gotta take a club to Hugh.' If my ego didn't get a blow once in a while, you couldn't live with me." "I think Hugh in many ways was a very humble person," Connie Codding said Saturday. "He had as much respect for the truck driver as he did for the CEO of Bank of America." His employees, from construction workers to office staff, were his biggest fans and he was equally loyal to them.
Codding is survived by his wife, Connie, in her own right a community
leader and political activist and who heads the Codding Foundation.