Our 40 Year History

 

The founders, Mike McEnespy and Myles Pustejovsky, were originally employed by another area firm, McCain and Associates, throughout the late seventies and early eighties.

In June of 1983 NorthStar was formed after the closure of McCain and Associates. Much of McCain and Associates business came from contract work to the Pacific Bell Telephone Company. In June of 1983, Pacific Bell closed its doors to outside contractors and McCain and Associates closed its doors as well. Mike and Myles formed NorthStar in late June of 1983 and brought on Mark Adams, another McCain employee, who is still a team member of the company to this day. In July of 1983, Jim Stevens came aboard along with two other of McCain’s employees, Dorothy Bedford and Tony Flores, and began business with a total staff of six people. The owners of the newly-formed company purchased Everd McCain’s client list to hit the ground running.

In 1986, the Land Development Department was created to concentrate on Subdivisions and Parcel Maps, which at the time constituted a majority of NorthStar’s business.

In 1988, the Building Design Department began offering structural calculations for local building projects, both residential and commercial, and our employee count continued to increase. The next year brought us together with Gahagan and Bryant Associates, a firm out of Tampa, Florida, to form G.B. Star. G.B. Star performs hydrographic surveys primarily in the Bay Area for clients such as The Army Corps of Engineers (dredge monitoring of deep water channels), the Navy, at both the Port in San Francisco and the Port of Oakland, and Chevron Oil, doing pre and post dredge surveys for shipping berths.

In the early 1990’s an economic downturn inspired the company to further diversify its services. In order to ensure a secure workload, the company created the Onsite Wastewater Department.

We began providing design for new and existing on-site wastewater (septic) systems. This primarily occurred in Paradise, 15 minutes to the east, a community of approximately 40,000-50,000 without a public sewer system. This has expanded to assisting clients across California.

In 2003, Myles decided to retire.  Mike, Mark, and Jim made up the ownership group.

In January of 2004, Mike was diagnosed with cancer. He immediately began treatment but never returned to work. He passed in February 2005 and Mark Adams assumed the role of President. Mark and Jim became sole owners of the company. 

In 2006 Neil and Jim Herrick joined ownership into the company.   

In 2008 Jay Lowe and Nick Weigel came into ownership. 

On January 1, 2011, GDA Engineering, Surveying, and Planning of Oroville, California joined NorthStar.

GDA had been providing quality engineering, surveying and land planning services throughout California since 1974.

in 2013 Jim Herrick retired from NorthStar after 25 years with the company.

In 2014 we added architecture to our expanding list of services.

In 2014 NorthStar welcomed architect, Larry Coffman, to expand our services with the addition of an Architecture Department. Since then our architecture team has been growing and providing exceptional architecture and unique designs for a variety of large-scale projects throughout the north state. This same year, Ross Simmons became a part of the ownership group.

2017 - 2022 saw an expansion in ownership and some long term team members retiring.

In 2017 Mike Mays, Robin Kampmann, Mark Herrick, Kamie Loeser, and Larry Coffman joined the ownership group. Mark Adams stepped down as President and turned the reins over to Nick Weigel.  Teresa Enos-Wakefield joined NorthStar as Director of Business Operations to oversee our growing Business Operations Department.

In 2018 Karen Ritchie retired as Office Manager after 25 years of service.  Larry stepped down as Architecture Department Manager, moving into a role as Senior Architect.  Sean Shearer joined NorthStar as our new Architecture Department Manager.

In 2019 Ty Yurkovic came into ownership. 

2020 will be remembered by all as the year of COVID. We began working fully remote and survived the ever changing world. Neil Graber retired as Senior Engineer after 20 years of work with NorthStar. Nicole Ledford  came into ownership while Kamie left NorthStar as Environmental Department Manager after 10 years with the company. That same year, Mark Wolfe joined NorthStar and took over as Environmental Department Manager. 

In 2021 Larry Coffman retired as Senior Architect, and Teresa joined the ownership group.

In 2022 we dissolved the Environmental Department to focus on A&E services.  Sean Shearer and Rich Guevarra joined the ownership group.

2023 brought new leadership.

In 2023, Nick Weigel left NorthStar after 21 years to focus on his passion of sustainable wastewater management.  Teresa stepped into the role of President, excited to take the company into the future. Jay Lowe and Mike Mays were made Vice Presidents to help Teresa in leading NorthStar forward.  Robin Kampmann was promoted to Department Manager of both the Civil and Survey departments.

2024 brought renewed focus.

With new leadership in place, NorthStar recognized that in order to expand our offerings to clients in the North State, we needed to grow the capacity of the architectural team. This resulted in a decision to allow Studio W Architects, an organization we had partnered with in many projects, to acquire our Architecture division. This was a unique opportunity that led to an amazing win-win for both companies as well as for our clients. The synergy between NorthStar and Studio W Architects will only be further enriched through this acquisition, as it expands the resources of both companies to be able to further serve clients across the North State as Studio W continues building on the foundation we started.