Common Council of the City of London member Ivan Luckin put forward the idea of selling the bridge, and recalled: "They all thought I was completely crazy when I suggested we should sell London Bridge when it needed replacing." Subsequently, in 1968, Council placed the bridge on the market and began to look for potential buyers. On 18 April 1968, Rennie's bridge was purchased by the Missourian entrepreneur Robert P. McCulloch of McCulloch Oil for US$2,460,000. The claim that McCulloch believed mistakenly that he was buying the more impressive Tower Bridge was denied by Luckin in a newspaper interview. As the bridge was taken apart, each piece was numbered. The pieces were transported to Merrivale Quarry at Princetown in Devon, where 15 to 20 cm (6 to 8 inches) were sliced off many of the original stones. (The stones left behind were sold in an online auction when the quarry was abandoned and flooded in 2003.) The resultant blocks were then shipped via the Panama Canal to California and trucked from Long Beach to Arizona. The original stonework was then used to clad a new concrete structure. The bridge was reconstructed by Sundt Construction at Lake Havasu City, Arizona, and re-dedicated on 10 October 1971. The bridge spans the Bridgewater Channel canal that leads from the Uptown area of Lake Havasu City and follows McCulloch Boulevard onto an island that has yet to be named.