Business

Lapsley moving office to Hendersonville

Engineer Bill Lapsley bought the historic Merry Miller building from state Sen. Tom Apodaca.

By Bill Moss, Published: August 18, 2012

Bill Lapsley will be saving himself a commute.

The owner and principal engineer of William G. Lapsley and Associates, Lapsley is moving his firm from Biltmore Park in Arden to King Street in Hendersonville, next door to the county office that handles zoning applications and issues building permits.
Bill LapsleyIt's familiar ground for Lapsley, who first came to Hendersonville in the 1970s as the city water director and has played a role in the development of Henderson County for more than four decades.
If it's underground and carries water or wastewater, Lapsley probably had something to do with burying it. The University of Wyoming graduate has worked as lead engineer on countless water and sewerage projects throughout the region.
This year he won the site engineering work for the most visible economic development project in recent years. His firm will do the engineering work for an access road and utility lines for the new Sierra Nevada brewery in Mills River.
On July 30, Lapsley closed on the purchase of the historic Merry Miller building at 214 N. King St. from Sierra Investment Properties (no relation to the brewery) from state Sen. Tom Apodaca for $562,500, land records said.
Built in 1930, the building was the original site of the McFadden gristmill and later operated as the Merry Miller by Leona Farquhar, the wife of Flat Rock Playhouse founder Robroy Farquhar.
In recent years the building has housed Apodaca's legislative office and his business, Southeastern Sureties, and has served as headquarters for Jeff Miller's 2010 campaign for Congress and an office for Mark Meadows' congressional campaign this year. The 10,454-square-foot two-story building on a quarter acre is assessed for tax purposes at $426,300 and had recently been listed for $895,000.
The Lapsley firm had been located on Asheville Highway before moving nine years ago to Biltmore Park, a retail-office-residential development.
"We've done virtually all the site development, planning and engineering related to the entire Biltmore Park development. That's really why we moved out there," he said.
"We just wanted to come back home," he added. "We have strong ties to Hendersonville and Henderson County and we saw an opportunity to relocate back to town."
After he left the Hendersonville water department, Lapsley joined an engineering firm in Asheville. He started his own engineering firm in the 1980s, and has won both private and public contracts steadily through the boom years and leaner times.
"We've got a lot of active projects in Henderson County, and we're doing several projects for the Henderson County commissioners as well," he said. "The last four months we've seen an uptick in venture capital. It's very encouraging but there's still very little work in the single-family subdivision area."