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T H E F A M I LY
BIZ
HOW A FEW OF OUR READERS’ FAVE COMPANIES BENEFIT FROM WORKING WITH RELATIVES BY BROOKE SPACH
HOBBS ARCHITECTS
T
aylor Hobbs and Grimsley Hobbs
understand the business advantage of a shared trust. When Grimsley’s first firm in Goldsboro closed in 2005, he knew his son, Taylor, was the only person with whom he would want to start a new business. And so they did, that very same year. Hobbs Architects, located just two blocks from downtown Pittsboro, mainly focuses on public-use projects. Taylor says that within their seven-person staff, a core group has been with the firm for more than 10 years. Hobbs Architects is located in the historical Lewis Freeman House, which, for the most part, has been left in its original form – a prime example of Hobbs’ motto of “preserving the past and designing the future.” A community-oriented firm, Hobbs has completed several projects for the county and towns of Pittsboro and Siler City, including restoring the Chatham County Courthouse after a fire in 2010 and designing Central Carolina Community College’s Chatham Health Sciences Center and the Siler City Center, the latter of which
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is Chatham’s first LEED-certified building. LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is a designation by the U.S. Green Building Council. “Architects often get a reputation of having big egos,” Taylor says. “‘Our way or the highway’ type thing. [At Hobbs Architects], we’re listeners. We try to design to the client’s needs with simple, practical solutions that are well designed, but it’s not our vision. It’s the client’s vision.” Grimsley and Taylor attribute much of their success to loyal, working relationships with the people of Chatham County and its towns. They say receiving the recognition as one of Chatham’s best architects means that their thoughtful, dependable approach shines through their work. “It means a lot,” Taylor says. “One of our missions [is] to be a community architect for Chatham County. If we could work solely in Chatham County, we would.” When it comes to working together as a team, Taylor says he and his father “know each other’s strengths and can combine the two to cover more ground than [either] one of us can do individually. When it’s based on trust, it just makes things easier. That attitude and what people see when we’re working together – I think they pick up on the fact that we are a trustworthy business that’s reliable.” Grimsley echoes these sentiments. “Taylor has picked it up and taken it so much further than I was ever able to, so that has been very rewarding to me,” he says. “ I’ve never had a more satisfying professional relationship.”
BOLD REAL ESTATE, BOLD CONSTRUCTION, BOLD FOUNDATION
C
founded Bold 1990 and was motivated in 1997 to obtain his real estate license in order to access real estate transaction information. He and his mother, Jill Ehrenfeld, subsequently hris Ehrenfeld
Construction in
SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2022
One of our missions [is] to be a community architect for Chatham County – Taylor Hobbs