Editor's note: This story is part of Southwest Michigan Second Wave's On the Ground Calhoun County series.
 
A bookshelf that fell on Staci Stuart broke her back. It did not break her spirit.
 
Stuart owns Urban Blue Development and co-owns Stirling Books & Brew in Albion with her husband, Jim. When she was injured in 2017, she helped her husband manage the bookstore in a wheelchair, which has since become her base of operations when orchestrating her construction team of three.
 
The focus of Urban Blue Development’s work is lead abatement at homes throughout Calhoun County.
 
John GrapStirling Books and Brew in downtown Albion is owned by Staci and Jim Stuart.“I love it. I’m working with different people all the time, having a goal and accomplishing it,” she says. “I have a great crew and they do quality work.”
 
This work involves siding the outside of houses and installing new windows and doors to create lead-free dwellings.
 
“Staci pays the bills,” she says of herself. “I order things. Anything that requires a piece of paper, I do it.”

“She’s the spider in the web, controlling the web,” says Chris Douglas, Rehabilitation Coordinator for the City of Battle Creek’s Community Development Department.
 
John GrapWorkers with Urban Blue Development are working on a house in Albion being renovated to remove lead.Stuart is one of seven contractors who work with the City of Battle Creek’s Lead Safe Program (LSP). This lead-abatement grant is funded by Michigan's Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and administered in partnership with the Community Action Agency (CAA) of South Central Michigan. The Lead Hazard Control Program is funded by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

“The City does rehab and abatement within the city limits. CAA runs a program just like us and we fund the program and do lead abatements outside of the city limits. Staci works for CAA and the City,” says Helen Guzzo, Community Development Supervisor for the City of Battle Creek.

Because the LSP receives federal funding both CAA and Guzzo’s department are required to go through a competitive bidding process. 
Like other contractors, Urban Blue doesn’t always submit the winning bid.

When they do successfully bid on a project, “We know she’s going to do a good job and go above and beyond,” Guzzo says.

Stuart is the boss in an industry where women are significantly underrepresented, according to an article on the Buildertrend website .

John GrapThis house on Burr Oak Street in Albion is being renovated to remove lead.Douglas says Stuart “is the only female we work with who owns her own company.”
 
According to a 2022 report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics, women only make up 10.9% of the construction industry workforce. Since women make up almost 50% of the entire workforce, the construction division is severely lacking female contributions.

“There’s still this ‘men's work’ and ‘women's work’ thinking,” Guzzo says. 
 
Andrew Van Dam from the Washington Post said that the lack of women in these spaces is an industry problem.
 
John GrapLandon Seal works on windows in a house in Albion being being renovated to remove lead.“After all, the lack of women in construction wasn’t due to a lack of supply of women willing to take lucrative, secure work as carpenters or welders,” Van Dam said. “It was due to a lack of demand among employers and workplaces, which were often hostile to women workers. For women to really thrive in the trades, the industry had to change.”
 
Stuart says she has never experienced the hostility that Van Dam highlights.

“I know what I’m talking about. if you know what you’re talking about no guy’s going to say,’ Oh, you’re a woman,” she says.
 
Coming back from a dark place
 
A self-avowed Christian, Stuart says she went to a dark place in 2017. The accident made the simple act of breathing difficult and painful. Her husband stayed by her hospital bedside and encouraged her to work through her pain.
 
“My pain level in the ICU (Intensive Care Unit) was 10 and the only thing I could do was to be focused on breathing.”
 
John GrapInside view of Stirling Books and Brew in downtown AlbionWith seemingly no end in sight, she says, “I looked at my situation and my pain level was so high I contemplated if there was another solution I was going to take.”
 
But, the notion of quitting on herself is a foreign concept and one she’s never embraced.
 
“I told myself, ‘You’re not going to kill yourself so what other alternatives do I have? I just knew I wasn’t going to fix the situation by killing myself.”
 
She instead took a seat that lifted her out of the dark times and helped her to manage the pain that has become a constant companion. The realization that a motorized wheelchair was in her future was “overwhelming” and a scenario she never contemplated, but it’s how she manages her crew and her company’s construction jobs.

John GrapInside view of Stirling Books and Brew in downtown Albion“It seemed like she really had to re-invent herself after the accident.  Her resilience and positive attitude is really amazing,” Guzzo says.
 
On a Pain Scale of 10, Stuart says her body hovers between 3 and 4. She lays down when she needs to never allowing the discomfort to override the new normal she’s now living.
 
“I like staying busy and distracted and engaging,” Stuart says
 
Stress fractures lead to a solid foundation
 
Marriage brought her to Albion, but it was a circuitous route that got her there.
 
A native of Jackson, she was seeking to put some distance between herself and Michigan winters. After earning a Bachelor’s degree in Business from Western Michigan University, she convinced her sister to move with her in 1991 to Charlotte, North Carolina. By day she sold educational software developed by Microsoft and Adobe to various school districts. Her evenings were spent building her first house.
 
John GrapRyan Georgopoulis works on a door at a house in Albion being renovated to remove lead.“Staci has to be a little spontaneous at times,” she says of herself. After watching several episodes of “Flip This House,” that spontaneity became her new reality.
 
The idea to build new came from her father who worked in construction in Jackson.
 
“I told him I was going to buy a house and he said why don’t you build it.”
 
Knowing that she had some ability and her father would be there as a resource she dove in. He walked her through the building and fixing process via continuous phone conversations and her brother who works for a construction company did all of the framing. The rest was pretty much up to her.
 
The build began in March 1998 and by December of that year, she was cleared to move in. That house was near the Charlotte Douglas International Airport which acquired the property and razed the house several years after Stuart sold it to someone else.
 
Stirling Books and Brew in downtown Albion is owned by Staci and Jim Stuart.On one of her trips to North Carolina to visit her mother Stuart visited the site.
 
“The only thing left is my handprint at the end of part of the driveway that’s still there,” she says. “Everything else is gone.”
 
That initial foray became her full-time gig in 2006 when she founded Urban Blue Development and left her software sales job.
 
During her time in Charlotte, she flipped about 14 houses and built 3 new ones in desirable areas of the city.
 
A home she purchased for $40,000 sold for double what she paid. A 900-square-foot bungalow that she purchased in 2007 for $159,000 recently sold for $618,000.
 
During this time the real estate market was exploding. When it began to cool Stuart found herself in precarious financial circumstances.
 
John GrapStaci Stuart of Urban Blue Development is in front of a house in Albion being renovated to remove lead.In her words, when this happened “What else can you do? You move in with Dad.”
 
She came back to Michigan in 2010 and went to work for her father who was focused on weatherization work. One year after coming back, she was doing projects in Hillsdale, Jackson, and Lenawee counties.
 
“I thought he was going to make me the boss. He wasn’t pulling any punches and he put me to work.”
 
Her father had picked up weatherization contracts through Community Action Agencies and Stuart and her fellow workers would insulate homes while also changing out windows and doors to increase energy efficiency.
 
“I was the only female and I got a lot of looks, but I had also done all of this work before. The guys I worked with knew that.”
 
In March 2012, funding for the federal Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP) stopped, and those contractors who had been providing weatherization services pivoted to other ways to make money.
 
With the money he had saved, Stuart’s father purchased a Bounce House attraction at a mall in Jackson. When he died one year later, a friend of hers took over operations keeping the business's nine employees, mostly single mothers, employed. The man who would become her husband helped her work through the transition.
 
Then, she packed her bags and went to Thailand where she taught English as a Second Language for several months.
 
John GrapWarning on an outside faucet at a house in Albion being renovated to remove lead“I had always wanted to live overseas,” Stuart says. “Jim and I Skyped while I was there and he came and visited me for two weeks.”
 
They married in 2014 and settled in Albion where he was living.
 
She turned her attention back to construction starting with a home her husband had purchased to rent out, followed by the renovation of a 12,000-square-foot two-story building that would house their bookstore and a few other businesses.
 
Three days prior to the planned opening of that bookstore on April 29, the bookshelf fell.

“We finally opened on August 1, 2017. We were able to do this because the community helped Jim while I was in the hospital. Students from Albion College, people from different churches, and people from throughout the community showed up to help us. We’re still going strong.”