Ellen Hoover (left) and Bill Laird, resize blueprints for a local project.
Ryan lely/Sonoma Valley Sun
Last June, local architect Sidney Hoover was at Sonoma Blueprint having a series of blueprints made when he learned that the 18-year-old shop was going to close down soon. Concerned that the community would have to go out of town for blueprint copies, Hoover asked whether the business was for sale. It turned out to be available, and Hoover and his wife, Ellen, made the decision to acquire it, with the stipulation that manager Bill Laird stay on to run the shop. Laird agreed, and in July Sonoma Blueprint changed hands.
“We had not planned on having another business,” Hoover said, “but we felt it was an important service for architects, designers, engineers and the construction community to have here in town. Once Bill agreed to remain as the manager, we felt confident we could continue a quality operation.”
Sonoma Blueprint specializes in making copies of the types of plans and forms needed by the building industries, with dedicated digital equipment that allows high-volume production and quick turn-around. The shop also has a large customer base of landscape architects, draftsmen, civil engineers and even artists. “We make blueprints for interior designers, decorative painters, muralists, patterns for tile mosaics and for woodcarvers who want to replicate their design for, say, a mantle, so the left and right sides are perfectly matched,” said Laird. “We even have airplane aficionados who bring original plans for planes in and make a digital backup. People inherit or discover old documents that are very fragile, like the person who found a complete set of designs for the engine and coal car at Train Town.”
The Hoovers rely on Laird’s expertise with the equipment and his understanding of the myriad variations in documents and customer needs. “We would not have been able to do this without Bill,” said Ellen Hoover. “Sonoma Blueprint has a loyal group of customers and Bill knows all of them. He has a wonderful, patient and calm manner, and can assess a job and figure out the best way to do it in no time at all.” Ellen Hoover takes care of the business side of the shop and she and her husband have spent the last year reorganizing and upgrading the operation. They invested in a new, state-of-the-art system recently, to be able to handle high-volume runs easier and produce high quality documents. Laird notes that he was able to run an order of 12 copies each of 40 original documents, and bind them in a little over an hour.
“There is a surprisingly broad community that relies on this business,” said Sidney Hoover. “We feel it is a good fit for us and that it provides a needed service for Sonoma Valley.”
Sonoma Blueprint is located at 18812 Sonoma Hwy. 707.938.2583 and open Mon. – Fri. 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.
