Grimsleys sell engineering firm to another husband-and-wife
pair
Clients are still in disbelief that Roger Grimsley and his wife,
Toni, have sold their engineering firm to new owners. They started
the local firm in 1983, working through two building moratoriums
and an earthquake in 1989 that brought most of downtown Hollister
to the ground.
Grimsleys sell engineering firm to another husband-and-wife pair
Clients are still in disbelief that Roger Grimsley and his wife, Toni, have sold their engineering firm to new owners. They started the local firm in 1983, working through two building moratoriums and an earthquake in 1989 that brought most of downtown Hollister to the ground.
At the time of the Loma Prieta temblor, the Grimsleys had an office in the Farmers and Merchants Bank Building. While Toni struggled to get permission to go inside their office for a few essentials such as a company checkbook, Grimsley took off down the street to help other building owners with structural damage to their sites.
“We couldn’t even get into our own building,” Toni said.
After years of service, the couple passed their company along to Matt and Trudy Kelley, who took over Jan. 1.
“I’m retiring. I’m going to be 67,” Grimsley said. “Before my health fails, I want time to do things.”
Toni and her husband have plans to travel, though they haven’t set any dates or picked destinations yet so they can focus on the transition with their clients and finish a project or two.
“I heard a lot of ‘Roger’s really retiring?'” said Toni, who has short, black hair and dark eyes.
Grimsley has a piercing gaze and gray hair that he jokingly attributed to his years in the business. Mostly serious, he pauses while talking about his career to make a joke from time to time.
“You are always hardest on your loved ones,” he said, with a chuckle, when his wife pointed out that he always had patience for clients but did not always have patience with her.
Grimsley started working in San Jose, Los Gatos and Santa Clara for an engineering firm before becoming city manager for Hollister in the 70s and early 80s. After he left the city post, he started Grimsley and Associates, the couple’s engineering firm.
Before Grimsley could retire, he needed to know his clients would be in good hands, he said. He approached Matt Kelley, who worked as a city airport engineer and has worked in several private firms, and Kelley’s wife, Trudy, about taking over the company.
“I never thought I’d get to work [in Hollister] when I started 18 years ago,” Kelley said.
Kelley has salt-and-pepper hair and a broke into a wide smile every time he talked about the future of the company.
He started his career in San Jose, always with the goal to land an engineering job closer to home in San Benito.
“We are very delighted. They can still give the local flavor and continue with our clients,” Grimsley said. “I was worried that if we went out of business a big engineering firm [out of town] would move in. We would lose the personal relationship and local feel.”
During the transition, the Grimsleys offered the Kelleys free rent for the first four months of their venture and have passed along some projects already in progress.
“We had meetings with clients so they could come in and get a feel [for the new owners],” Toni said. “Roger’s here for the transition.”
Grimsley is completing his last project with South Valley Trailers. The planned Hwy. 25 bypass goes straight through the business’ current location so the owners enlisted Grimsley’s help to build a new location up the road.
Over the years, Grimsley has worked day and night designing plans for residential and commercial projects around town. Some of the projects he had a hand in include Oak Creek, Quail Hollow and Southside Estates.
“Whenever I worked on residential subdivisions I didn’t like straight streets,” Grimsley said. “I love to make streets and roads curvy – creating neighborhoods by select building sites.”
Sometimes his wife would find him up at 4 a.m. drawing and designing projects.
“We raised two small children and he always said ‘let’s go for a ride’ and then he’d take us out to see all the projects he was working on,” Toni said. “The kids would be asleep halfway through the drive.”
Even after projects were completed, Grimsley couldn’t resist going out to see if they worked the way he designed them to work. During rain storms, he’d go out to check on completed projects.
“You put something on paper and to go out to see the fruits of your labors – something created in your mind and now it’s a reality, you have a sense of pride,” he said “That’s the greatest thing for the last 50 years.”
While Grimsley was creating, he credits his wife with keeping them in business.
“The most important thing was sending out the bills,” Grimsley said. “The last thing I would think about was sending out a bill, but it’s the most important thing to keeping a business running.”
As Kelley and his wife, Trudy, take over the business they have renamed it Kelley Engineering and Surveying. Trudy, who is prepared to be the face of the company with her styled hair and a button down shirt under a v-neck sweater, has been working with Toni to learn more about the paperwork process for the company.
The Kelleys plan to focus on commercial and residential projects, but Kelley wants to work on airport projects as well.
“The timing is ideal with the moratorium,” Kelley said. “We have a few years to settle in and get organized.”
For now, the staff will include the Kelleys, their 15-year-old son who has shown an interest in drafting, and an engineer who has worked with the Grimsleys for 11 years.
Even with the moratorium, which should be lifted in 2009, there are plenty of projects in San Benito that require civil engineers, Grimsley said.
“They have a great reputation and we have to live up to high expectations,” Trudy said.
Melissa Flores can be reached at
mf*****@pi**********.com
.
