{"id":92,"date":"2025-09-15T14:06:19","date_gmt":"2025-09-15T14:06:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/websitebuilder-demo.net\/truebuild\/?page_id=26"},"modified":"2026-05-18T13:13:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T21:13:07","slug":"about","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/alderridge.biz\/index.php\/about\/","title":{"rendered":"About"},"content":{"rendered":"
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home \/ about<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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ABOUT<\/span><\/h1>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n
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Our Goal: help to create a more vital and vibrant community that would foster interconnectedness<\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Couple Lisa and Ralph McRae have begun the process of turning the longtime location of the family\u2019s paintbrush handle factory in south Bay City into a mixed-use development.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ralph and Lisa said that they wanted to honor the legacy of the family factory by promoting a sense of community, which they plan to achieve by keeping space for businesses while adding a mix of different housing types.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a great way to live, you know,\u201d Ralph said, \u201cthe commute is awesome, walk to work, if your kids are nearby, you can spend some time with them at lunch, that\u2019s the thing for me.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Since then, the McRaes have opened a U-Haul business and offer storage space around the property for rent, and several locals have set up workshops in the main warehouse building. The couple also sold two nearby houses and moved into an apartment onsite, investing the proceeds from the sales into the property.<\/span><\/p>\n

At the same time, the couple has been developing a vision for the property\u2019s future.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lisa said that early on the couple identified housing as a good use for the property but that they had also quickly determined the property\u2019s size and history meant it should not be their sole focus.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe need housing, we get that,\u201d Lisa said, \u201chowever, there\u2019s also a place for other things that the entire county needs. We need daycare, we need senior care or, you know, there\u2019s so many things that we need and so is there a way that we can affect that and that\u2019s what we\u2019ve been attempting to do.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

So far, that has meant that the couple has taken the lead on the project, eschewing outside developers to avoid potential conflicts over maximizing profits by dedicating the whole site to housing.<\/span><\/p>\n

Beyond that, there are three other areas of the property that the McRaes hope to dedicate to housing in the future. One, on the property\u2019s south end sporting beautiful views of the coast range, would be for senior-focused housing, another on the property\u2019s east side would target young families with an affordable ownership model for single-family homes and the last, behind the apartment building site, might have market rate townhouses.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Ralph has a lifelong connection to the property, on which his grandfather and father built the paintbrush handle factory in 1957. The pair began the business after asking the local paintbrush factory about their handle supply and being offered a contract for 1,000 handles, which they filled by building the factory, using their machining skills to set up production.<\/span><\/p>\n

The business employed up to 100 people at different points, and Ralph said that the remembers the community spirit fostered by events like overtime Saturdays, when workers would bring their families to the factory as they worked to complete an order. <\/span><\/p>\n

By the 2010s, Ralph and Lisa were running the factory but after Sherwin Williams bought out the paintbrush factory, margins slimmed as the multinational demanded investments in costly new machinery and was sometimes slow on payments. <\/span><\/p>\n

This led the couple to the hard decision to close the paintbrush handle operation in June 2019. The couple retooled the factory to work with a furniture company but after a year found that it wasn\u2019t a good fit and shuttered the factory.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Those plans are still extremely preliminary, but Lisa said that she believed offering housing for different segments of the population would \u200bhelp to create a more vital and vibrant community that would foster interconnectedness and full lives for its residents. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cPeople feel more alive when they\u2019re connected and so how do we do that,\u201d Lisa said. \u201cWe are in a unique position where we can actually say, oh, okay, that what we want to have there.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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