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Heavy-equipment manufacturer Caterpillar announced it would open a regional division west of downtown, but as executives and engineers started to scope out housing options in the Tucson area, many were told to avoid downtown.

Redevelopment efforts in the city’s core were underway, but not complete.

Three local real estate businessmen, two brokers and a mortgage banker, decided to correct misinformation Caterpillar employees had about downtown.

They put together a series of tours to show future residential projects under construction, such as , and , which were still concepts in development.

The trio rented a bus, started Tucson Trolley Tours, and offered informational tours of downtown to future Caterpillar employees.

“We took them around and gave them some history of downtown,� said Tom Heath, one of the founders and a mortgage banker with Nova Home Loans. “At the time, all these apartments there now weren’t there yet so we gathered renderings of what was planned for the area.�

Heath and his partners, Tony Ray Baker and Darren Jones, with ReMax, decided to do the tour for real estate agents who may not have been familiar with the downtown plans.

The first tour included nearly 40 brokers, Heath said.

A few weeks later, they got a call asking when the next tour would be held.

“We didn’t have one planned,� Heath said. “But we did a second one, then a third and so on.

“Helping people understand this community is how the tours came to be.�

Last year, Tucson Trolley bought a 22-passenger bus as the tours started to grow and became a popular way to see all the murals in the downtown and Fourth Avenue areas.

Heath enrolled at Pima Community College to get a commercial driver’s license.

“The depth of culture and history in our town is overwhelming,� Heath said. “A lot of people who live here who don’t understand Tucson history.�

The tours have expanded to the west side, “A� Mountain, and winding through the presidio, giving riders some history of the old Chinese grocery stores, the historic courthouse, the Jan. 8 memorial, the USS Arizona memorial on campus, and finishing at the .

Along the way, readers hear the history of such places as El Tiradito shrine and the Tucson Convention Center.

“We show them 4,000 years of history in under three hours,� Heath said. “We talk about the convention center and how much we lost, trying to tie it full circle with economic development.

“The good, the bad, the violence and the love.�

Aside from single ticket sales, the trolley also gets booked for private group tours from companies to family gatherings.

Now the business wants to expand with a second bus and add more tours to the schedule. It hopes to expand the route onto the Sunshine Mile, the section of East Broadway from Euclid Avenue to Country Club Road, which has undergone major renovations.

“We’d like to build up that route with history of the mid-century architecture,� Heath said.

He approached the board last month for help in reaching that goal.

The trolley will open a kiosk at 245 E. Congress St. with ticket sales and a guest hub, in conjunction with this fall.

Rio Nuevo agreed to provide $19,500 to build out the kiosk and make repairs to the existing bus, including a better AC system.

“You’ve managed to turn a business into a hobby,� board chairman Fletcher McCusker told Heath, calling him “an ambassador� of downtown.

The tours run twice on Saturdays and Sundays and once during the week, aside from private bookings.

Tickets are $40 per rider, with military, senior, student and child discounts.

Currently, tickets can be purchased online at and through .

In the coming years, the plan is to buy a second trolley, add a second driver and increase ticket sales, along with adding destinations.