Family Business: The Keiters Build a Legacy

Written by Melissa Karen Sances
Photos by Nikki Gardner Photography

Sponsored by Valley Home Improvement

Published in Northampton Living (May 2023)

Construction was his profession, not his destiny. Throughout high school and college, Scott Keiter was a natural builder and engineer – both were in his blood – but he had something else in his back pocket: his “Dream Book.” It was just as it sounds, a catalogue of possibilities, a reminder that one day the adventurer in him would helm an enterprise.

While earning his bachelor’s in natural resource economics at the University of Rhode Island, Scott started his first unofficial business, “The Drywall Doctor.” As the sole proprietor, he was an on-call hole-patcher for dorm rooms that had seen better days. After earning his master’s in environmental economics, Keiter needed a breather. So in 2006 the dream book was shelved for a construction gig in Northampton, Massachusetts. It was time to build a new spa.

At the cosmetology school on Pleasant Street, the future Jill Keiter waited for the contractor. Even though she was the school’s director and wouldn’t lift a finger, let alone a hammer, she was no stranger to building. Her father had been a carpenter and she his loving apprentice. “There’s not a single project that he did that I wasn’t right there by his side helping him, whether it was roofing, or framing, or building a shelf,” she says. But her dreams had nothing to do with construction. What she wanted was a close-knit family.

But when the handsome contractor walked into her life, she wasn’t in a place to dream. Neither was he. They were both going through divorces, and all each wanted was a friend. “We had a common bond, and he made me laugh,” she says. “Every day I saw him he made me laugh.”

It's an important detail, that when they met, they were both navigating endings. Today they joke that they are “late bloomers,” but the landscape changed when they decided to grow together.

This spring,  at the 13-year-old Keiter Corporation, Jill and Scott sit side-by-side in a company they started when they had nothing left to lose. It took a couple years (luckily the spa gig didn’t have a hard deadline), but Scott realized that, in one way or another, he had always been in the business of building – and his dream enterprise was his own. His own with his new partner, that is. And as their friendship grew, Jill saw how tender Scott was with his own family. She was sure she wanted to start theirs.

“What we do, we do together,” she says. “Whether it’s raise our family, or build buildings.”

Throughout our conversation, they share separately, but more often they tell a story together in remarkable synchrony, like a dream tag-team. Scott bears a striking resemblance to Ed Helms and his quick wit still makes Jill laugh. Her smile is radiant and warm, her joy almost resonant.

“Our first projects were doing trim on a door, or whatever I could do by myself,” Scott says, recalling what business was like in 2008. “I was by myself – myself and my dog.”

“You and Tank,” says Jill.

“Tanker, he was a bull mastiff.”

“Yup, he was your partner.”

“He would lay under the saw,” he says incredulously. “He could go anywhere, but he’d choose to lay right under my saw. And all the sawdust would just – he would be covered in sawdust.” “Oh – and I’d blow him off with the air compressor!”

They can’t stop laughing.

“He was amazing,” says Jill. “What better partner to have than a silent partner.”

At first, Jill was his other silent partner, until the business grew enough to support the three of them. And then two more. Today Jack, 11, and Abby, 8, are their spitting images. Abby has followed in Jill’s footsteps and become Scott’s apprentice, and Jack, says his mom, is “the kindest person you will ever meet.”

“I’ve kind of gone from building structures to building people and the business,” says Scott, who now employs nearly 75 people he and Jill consider family, along with their numerous clients, many of whom are repeat customers. In the past few years, Scott and Jill have strengthened ties with local colleges, restored the iconic Look Park, created the popular Keiter Card to infuse money into the local economy, and invested in a thriving co-op program with vocational high schools.

“We just had our 5 year-anniversary for our first student,” says Jill. “It’s kind of like watching a child grow, and watching people raise people. Everyone benefits.”

In a roundabout way, construction was Scott’s destiny, just as it was Jill’s, though not in the way they'd dreamed. “Yeah, it’s amazing when you look back,” he says. “None of it was calculated or planned, so don’t give us too much credit.”

Now, back to building what they hope to leave behind: A legacy.