William Becker, the co-founder of Motel 6, the innovative low-budget motel chain launched in Santa Barbara in the early 1960s, has died. He was 85.
Mr. Becker, former chairman of the board of the Stockmen’s Bank, headquartered in Kingman, Ariz., died of a heart attack April 2 in a Kingman hospital, said his son, Tod Becker.
Mr. Becker and Motel 6 co-founder Paul Greene were Santa Barbara building contractors when they decided to build motels offering bargain-priced rooms.
Mr. Becker had been inspired by a cross-country car trip from Santa Barbara to Greenwich, N.Y., in 1960.
“Staying in motels across the country, you paid a high price and got poor lodging conditions,” Tod Becker recalled on Friday. “He thought, ‘Why not build a nice motel offering clean rooms at a budget price?’
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Mr. Becker and Greene initially planned on charging $4 a room per night — an amount that, with high occupancy, would cover building costs, land leases, mortgages, managers’ salaries and maid service — but they quickly determined that figure was too low.
They considered $5 per night before settling on the $6 per night that gave them their motel’s name. The first Motel 6, a 54-unit complex in Santa Barbara, opened in 1962.
“When we entered the business, we had the advantage of not knowing anything about it, so we weren’t burdened by preconceived notions,” Mr. Becker later said.
But they did have a background in building low-cost tract homes. By building their motels with their own crews and equipment, according to a 1967 Newsweek story, they estimated they saved 50 percent in initial construction costs.
Determined to keep costs low, Mr. Becker and Greene eliminated dressers in the rooms, replaced closets with clothes racks and built shower stalls with rounded edges rather than corners to reduce cleaning time.
By 1967, Motel 6 had 31 locations in California and four other Western states and in August that year boasted an 89 percent occupancy rate, which was 23 percent higher than the national average.
Born in Pasadena in 1921, he moved with his family to Santa Barbara in 1934. After serving in the Navy during World War II, he worked in a painting contracting business with his father and his brother.
He went into partnership with Greene in the late 1950s.
After selling Motel 6 in 1968 — today there are more than 880 Motel 6s in the U.S. and Canada — Mr. Becker and Greene continued to work with the company before retiring in 1973.
Mr. Becker purchased a cattle ranch east of Kingman in 1970, and he moved there in 1978.
The Stockmen’s Bank opened in Kingman in 1980, and Mr. Becker served as chairman of the board for the next 26 years. The bank, which grew to have 31 branches in Arizona and 12 in California, was sold and merged into National Bank of Arizona in January.
