New generation reshapes Woodruff Arnold
TONY BROWN/DAILY FORUM
Maryville businessman Keith Arnold is shown flanked by his children, Bryan Arnold and Michelle Wickersham, in Wickersham’s Aura Designs home remodeling store on South Main Street. Arnold, the longtime principal of Woodruff Arnold Construction & Plumbing in Maryville is retiring and has announced that the business will evolve into several separate enterprises to be operated by either his children or current Woodruff Arnold employees.
Recent coffee-shop talk around Maryville has it that one of this town’s most venerable businesses — Woodruff Arnold Construction & Plumbing — is closing.
Well, as it turns out that’s not exactly true. Rather than closing its doors at 1315 S. Main St., the family owned enterprise is merely transforming itself to meet the needs and aspirations of a new generation as principal Keith Arnold moves toward retirement.
Arnold, 69, said Wednesday that the portions of the business operated by his children, Michelle Wickersham and Bryan Arnold, will very much remain going concerns.
Other services provided by current employees and offering everything from well-digging and trenching to construction and remodeling will continue as well, though as separate businesses under different names.
But for the time being at least, customers doing business, or wishing to do business, with Woodruff Arnold can simply call the same phone number they’ve used for years, 660-562-2633, and proceed as usual.
“Woodruff Arnold as a company is reorganizing, and I guess in a sense will largely cease to exist,” Keith Arnold said. “But really we’re just changing our business focus.”
Which means that what is now, on paper anyway, a single company will soon become at least four as Arnold steps away from taking part in day-to-day operations. However, all the services currently offered by the business will stay in place.
“We’re going to find ways of taking care of our customers,” Arnold said.
Remaining at the Woodruff Arnold complex on South Main will be Wickersham’s Aura Designs, a home remodeling and interior design store that focuses on bathroom and kitchen furnishings and floor coverings.
Bryan Arnold also has his own independent operation, which has yet to be re-named, a plumbing and garage door business that includes the American Port-a-Pot portable toilet rental and septic tank pumping service.
In addition, veteran Woodruff Arnold employee Jim Proctor will continue offering well-digging, trenching, and backhoe work but as an independent contractor using, for now, the Woodruff Arnold phone number. Similarly, two other employees are assuming control of the business’ construction and remodeling operation.
Keith Arnold said one of his main goals as Woodruff Arnold transforms from one business into several is making sure that his children and former employees remain in a good position to be successful.
As for Arnold himself, he says he’s ready for some downtime but also plans to keep working to develop Ridgeline Estates, an upscale, 60-plus lot housing subdivision to be located in a large open area west of the city’s main water tower, east of Country Club Road, and north of the Oak Pointe Assisted Living & Memory Care retirement center.
One of Maryville’s most prolific residential developers, Arnold has created five new subdivisions here since beginning his business career in the early 1970s. Ridgeline Estates will be the sixth.
So Woodruff Arnold isn’t disappearing so much as undergoing a major transformation as a new generation comes into its own.
But that is old hat for a company that was founded as a coal-delivery service by Arnold’s late father-in-law, Clyde Woodruff, in 1945.
At the time coal was north Missouri’s main home-heating fuel, and Arnold said the Woodruff company was delivering 100 tons of coal a day to local homes and businesses before the advent of natural gas.
As coal gave way to gas in the 1950s, Woodruff started installing furnaces, which paved the way for expansion into the home construction sector.
Arnold, who grew up in Nebraska, married Woodruff’s daughter Sarah and joined the business in 1970 after graduating from Northwest Missouri State University with a degree in chemistry and physics. The firm expanded rapidly through the 1970s and ’80s, ultimately achieving a payroll of around 35 employees working at three lumberyards and several service companies.
In the years since, Arnold said, economic and demographic changes across northwest Missouri led to the company divesting itself of the lumberyards and concentrating largely on its plumbing and construction operations.
TONY BROWN/DAILY FORUM
A signature name within the Maryville business community for decades, Woodruff Arnold Plumbing & Construction will soon cease to be in its current form as principal Keith Arnold moves toward retirement. Enterprises currently folded into the family business, including a home remodeling firm and a plumbing/garage door service operated by Arnold’s children, will now become standalone companies.
