After century of work, foundry is set to close
SAN JOSE >> As Google brings the promise of a bright new future to downtown San Jose, a company that has survived relentless shifts in the economic landscape for a century will close its doors early next year.
But the shutdown of Kearney Pattern Works and Foundry, one of the last places in the Bay Area to create metal castings and shape them into specific patterns and objects, goes beyond the departure of an old-line industrial enterprise in fast-changing Silicon Valley. It also is the end of a kind of living museum of California’s industrial history.
“The birth of metalworking in California is reflective of the industries that were creating the economic boom of the day,” said James Simonelli, executive director of the California Cast
Metals Association. “The Gold Rush, the railroads, agriculture, all the way to the defense industry, hightech and automotive and clean energy industries, the metals industry has created parts for all of those sectors.”
The foundry is one of many companies downtown feeling the impact of Google’s plans to build a massive tech campus for up to 20,000 workers on about 245 acres near Diridon Station and the SAP Center. Borch’s Iron Works, across Autumn Street from Kearney, already has closed its doors. World of Sports, Diamond Auto Detail and C&C Architectural Glass have begun to ponder new sites.
Since it was founded in 1919, Kearney’s steadily shifting customer base has reflected the changes in the Bay Area.
Farmers, packing firms, canneries, wineries, utilities, concrete companies, nuclear plant builders, disk-drive companies, transit agencies, defense contractors, computer makers, semiconductor firms and medical devices manufacturers were among the industries that Kearney Pattern Works served, according to Jim Wagner, the company’s principal owner.
“We did a lot of work for a lot of companies,” said Wagner, 71. “What we did reflected what was happening with the Bay Area’s industry at the time.”
Big-name customers, Wagner recalled, included General Electric, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Applied
Materials, Agilent, Lam Research, KLA Tencor, FMC, Varian, Sun Microsystems, Bethlehem Steel and Ampex.
The company also did work for the famed wind tunnel at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, crafting huge metal plates, some weighing 400 pounds, to power the motors used to drive the wind blasts.
Other patterns that Kearney created included moving arms for the giant computers of yesteryear, as well as big and small components for today’s semiconductor equipment makers.
“Every day, we didn’t know what would be coming in the door as a new job,” Wagner said. “It’s been a great business. It was different every day.”
In some cases, Wagner recalled, key customers were being ushered out the back entrance as representatives
of another iconic company were being welcomed at the front entrance, so they wouldn’t bump into one another.
“We had an appointment with IBM at 10 a.m. one day and then H-P at 11 a.m.,” Wagner said. “So we had IBM go out one door while H-P came in the other.”
The Kearney Pattern Works operation in San Jose was launched by Wagner’s grandfather, Al Kearney.
Wagner started out working at Kearney Pattern Works doing an array of odd jobs such as truck driving, cleaning sand and pouring metal. After he graduated from San Jose State University there wasn’t any work for him there, so he took a job at a conveyor belt manufacturer in San Jose.
After about a year, he returned to Kearney as a sales manager. When the general manager left, grandfather
Kearney gave Wagner and two other men growing levels of responsibility, and eventually turned over the business to the trio. Wagner’s father, whose career was with Sunsweet Growers in San Jose, was never involved in the Kearney business.
“I slowly learned the entire foundry trade,” Wagner said.
Wagner said he considered moving the company out of downtown San Jose about a quarter-century ago.
“We wanted to relocate when the arena moved in here,” Wagner said, referring to the San Jose Arena, now the SAP Center, which opened in 1993. “The city Planning Commission said it didn’t want any more foundries in San Jose. We looked at places in Visalia and Modesto. It would have cost $7 million to move us at the time.”
The city balked at chipping in for relocation expenses, and the foundry remained.
However, when word started filtering out in 2016 that Mountain View-based Google and its development ally, Trammell Crow, had begun to collect properties near Diridon Station and the arena, Wagner said he realized it was only a matter of time.
“Foundries and metalworks companies are facing zoning issues in cities, as well as the factor of property values,” Simonelli said. “Often you see that the value of the land is worth more than your business. That becomes an incentive to sell.”
So Wagner struck a deal with Google.
“We could see the writing on the wall,” Wagner said. “And we couldn’t really start a new business elsewhere, because we couldn’t move our equipment feasibly. We would have had to build a whole new foundry from scratch.”
During the 1980s, at the height of the operation under Wagner, the company employed about 35 to 40 people. On the day in August
that employees poured and cast the final metal pattern, about 15 people were working in the shop. Now, the focus is on returning patterns to customers and selling equipment to other industrial operations.
Of the employees on staff when the final pourings occurred, most are going into the construction business, while a few found jobs with General Foundry in San Leandro.
Wagner will retire once he winds down the business completely. Google’s official purchase of the property is expected in the first half of 2019. Terms of the transaction weren’t disclosed.
In Wagner’s view, Kearney Pattern Works is still a viable business, with customers such as semiconductor firms and medical-equipment makers wanting to remain clients.
“It’s kind of a shame that we have to close and you hate to see it end,” Wagner said. “We’ve been here about a hundred years, and we could have gone on for a few more years.”