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ENLARGE
Andy Cassano, CEO of Nevada City Engineering Inc. in Nevada City, celebrates 40 years as a land planner and surveyor. One of his favorite projects was the 6B Ranch Estates off McCourtney Road, just west of Grass Valley.
After 40 years in planning, surveying and developing properties in western Nevada County, Andrew Cassano is no where near ready to retire.
“Heck no. What would I do if retire?” Cassano said. “I like having fun, and this is having fun.”
Cassano has had a hand in most major projects in the area during the decades of its greatest growth.
“It’s a real privilege,” Cassano said. “I definitely feel a connection to the projects I help design. Every public and private project, I always visualize the ripple effect.”
Cassano’s grandparents came in the early waves of Mormon immigrants to California, he said. He was born in the long-since-closed Miners Hospital in Nevada City, grew up in Camptonville, and attended Nevada Union High School and Sierra College.
In February 1969, Ken Baker launched Cassano’s career by hiring him as a draftsman to work at Cranmer Engineering Inc. in Grass Valley. Cassano worked by hand with ink on vellum and linen.
Since then, Cassano’s entire career has been based in Nevada County, with projects extending into Placer, Yuba, Sierra, Plumas, and Butte counties. During that same time, the country has grown from 20,000 residents to about 97,000.
Cassano worked extensively on the surveying, mapping and construction staking of Alta Sierra, Tahoe Donner and portions of Lake Wildwood and Lake of the Pines.
After seeing early subdivisions create some lots that he considered clearly defective building sites, Cassano became interested in community planning. He was influenced by what he saw of land use and growth patterns in Europe during a two-year stint in the U.S. Army in Germany. He found the Old World village clustering, open space conservation, public transportation, and low automobile ownership patterns impressive and inspiring, he said.
“I realized that these people had been learning how to live in sustainable ways centuries before the automobile,” Cassano said.
Green belt
Cassano was the first official city planner for Nevada City, hired to oversee the permitting of the Grass Valley Group campus on Providence Mine Road when the company moved from the Bitney Springs area.
As a private planner, Cassano wrote the environmental impact reports for the Grass Valley campus of Sierra College.
That project was exciting because the environmental reports were created before the project was designed, so they could influence the construction, Cassano said.
His favorite project was one of the early ones: The development of the 6B Ranch on McCourtney Road west of Grass Valley.
“A 75-acre green belt became the focal point of the development,” Cassano said. “They took the best part and set is aside.”
In 1998, he joined Nevada City Engineering, which Baker had founded some years before. The firm continues to offer planning, civil engineering and surveying to private and public clients.
His employees and office mates included his wife Kathy, son Ryan, and friends and colleagues Cindy Siegfried (now city planner of Nevada City) and Keith Sauers, the founder of Sauers Engineering, Inc.
To contact City Editor Trina Kleist, e-mail tkleist@theunion.com or call 477-4230.
“Heck no. What would I do if retire?” Cassano said. “I like having fun, and this is having fun.”
Cassano has had a hand in most major projects in the area during the decades of its greatest growth.
“It’s a real privilege,” Cassano said. “I definitely feel a connection to the projects I help design. Every public and private project, I always visualize the ripple effect.”
Cassano’s grandparents came in the early waves of Mormon immigrants to California, he said. He was born in the long-since-closed Miners Hospital in Nevada City, grew up in Camptonville, and attended Nevada Union High School and Sierra College.
In February 1969, Ken Baker launched Cassano’s career by hiring him as a draftsman to work at Cranmer Engineering Inc. in Grass Valley. Cassano worked by hand with ink on vellum and linen.
Since then, Cassano’s entire career has been based in Nevada County, with projects extending into Placer, Yuba, Sierra, Plumas, and Butte counties. During that same time, the country has grown from 20,000 residents to about 97,000.
Cassano worked extensively on the surveying, mapping and construction staking of Alta Sierra, Tahoe Donner and portions of Lake Wildwood and Lake of the Pines.
After seeing early subdivisions create some lots that he considered clearly defective building sites, Cassano became interested in community planning. He was influenced by what he saw of land use and growth patterns in Europe during a two-year stint in the U.S. Army in Germany. He found the Old World village clustering, open space conservation, public transportation, and low automobile ownership patterns impressive and inspiring, he said.
“I realized that these people had been learning how to live in sustainable ways centuries before the automobile,” Cassano said.
Green belt
Cassano was the first official city planner for Nevada City, hired to oversee the permitting of the Grass Valley Group campus on Providence Mine Road when the company moved from the Bitney Springs area.
As a private planner, Cassano wrote the environmental impact reports for the Grass Valley campus of Sierra College.
That project was exciting because the environmental reports were created before the project was designed, so they could influence the construction, Cassano said.
His favorite project was one of the early ones: The development of the 6B Ranch on McCourtney Road west of Grass Valley.
“A 75-acre green belt became the focal point of the development,” Cassano said. “They took the best part and set is aside.”
In 1998, he joined Nevada City Engineering, which Baker had founded some years before. The firm continues to offer planning, civil engineering and surveying to private and public clients.
His employees and office mates included his wife Kathy, son Ryan, and friends and colleagues Cindy Siegfried (now city planner of Nevada City) and Keith Sauers, the founder of Sauers Engineering, Inc.
To contact City Editor Trina Kleist, e-mail tkleist@theunion.com or call 477-4230.
