12 People You Need to Know in 2016: Louis Griesemer

Louis Griesemer didn’t expect a career when he started a summer job 38 years ago, but he’s still there.

It was 1977 – a lean year for hiring – and Griesemer was a computer science graduate.

“My intention was to spend a year or two here and get back into computer science,” he says. “I was pretty flexible to go wherever there was a good job.”

That good job was with Griesemer Stone Co., today’s Springfield Underground Inc., where Griesemer is president and CEO.

“I am the only one of my generation in the family business,” he says. “I actually went to work for my older brother when he was president of the company. He hired me for that summer job.”

That coincided with the passage of a 1977 federal act extending coal-mine regulations to all mines, including aggregate operations, such as Springfield Underground. Industry upheaval followed, and Griesemer became a certified mine safety instructor. Positions at company locations across the state followed. He became president in 1994.

In 2015, Springfield Underground ceased mining operations after nearly 70 years and 31 million tons of limestone, something Griesemer called a finite resource. The company has shifted focus to its 10 tenants, about 2 million square feet of developed space and another 3.6 million left to develop. Clients like the controlled access to dry, cooled or frozen storage.

One space is a meat slicing and packaging facility Cargill Inc. recently vacated. It was originally built for Hudson Foods, which had owned Willow Brook Foods’ Springfield plant. When Tyson Foods Inc. acquired Hudson in 1998, Willow Brook eventually was sold and then bought out; Griesemer was involved with the latter. Thus began his brief foray into meat processing and the reason for the dedicated slicing space at Springfield Underground.

When ethanol mandates doubled the price of corn, Willow Brook’s profits were squeezed. Cargill bought the business, eventually closed the local plant, took over the slicing space, and Griesemer shifted on the political spectrum.

“I’ve gone everywhere from Democrat to Republican to Libertarian,” he says. “I’m a free enterprise thinker. You can’t manage the economy at the level they want to. The best decisions are made at the lowest levels.

“There will always be winners and losers, but I’d prefer those decisions being made at the market level.”

To speak his voice, Griesemer has served on the Show-Me Institute board since 2010, a publically funded 501(c)3 think tank promoting free markets and individual liberty.

“Their philosophy and mine line up,” he says. “My thinking is the free market has worked every time it’s tried. It’s not a religion with me. I’m just trying to make things work. I’m a practical guy. What raises the standards of living for the most people? It’s messy, but in a free market you’ve got to let that happen.”