In the 1970s, following decades of industrial pollution highlighted by Cleveland's Cuyahoga River catching fire and disease and death creeping from buried barrels of toxins under a New York housing development called Love Canal, Congress started writing environmental law.
Steve Vanderboom, a 24-year-old graduate student studying for a master's degree in environmental engineering at the University of Minnesota, saw a business opportunity in 1976. He told his bosses at a Roseville chemical-testing lab they needed to move beyond municipal clients.
"I was reading these regulations and I was getting excited," recalled Vanderboom. "I told the owners that our good Minnesota companies are going to have to adapt. I said we should expand to industrial waste. The owners stayed focused. I was so upset that I told my wife we should start our own business."
Two years later, his wife out of school and working as a nurse, Vanderboom and a partner secured a $43,000 Small Business Administration-backed loan and opened Pace Analytical Services in 1,600 square feet in a low-rent building near Nicollet Avenue and Lake Street.
"We made money in the first year," recalled Vanderboom, 66.
Forty years after launching the company with former partner Bill O'Connor, a chemist, Pace is the largest American-owned lab company for environmental testing and sampling as well as testing for pharmaceutical, medical and drug devices.
The company, which projects revenue of $290 million this year, has grown at a compound annual rate of 12 percent over the last four years and employs 2,600 employees at 40 laboratories and other locations around the United States.
Vanderboom also has eschewed most interview requests over the years.
