Grizzly MEP: five partners, one year, and a blueprint for commercial MEP consolidation

When Garnett Station Partners launched Grizzly MEP in May 2025, the pitch was straightforward: find great commercial mechanical, electrical, and plumbing contractors, back them with capital and infrastructure, and let them keep doing what they do well. In the fourteen months since, the platform has made good on that thesis — adding five high-quality regional partners and establishing a footprint that now spans the Southeast, Mid-Atlantic, Florida, and New England.

The most recent addition, announced May 27, 2026, is Stegall Mechanical — a Birmingham, Alabama-based firm that has been operating since 1957. Stegall runs a fully integrated three-division platform covering plumbing, HVAC, and electrical, and serves industrial, utility, education, healthcare, food service, hospitality, retail, and property management customers across Alabama and the broader Southeast. At nearly 70 years old, Stegall brings exactly the kind of deep institutional knowledge and multi-generational customer relationships that makes a commercial MEP contractor difficult to replicate. For Grizzly, it meaningfully expands the platform's Southeast presence and adds another full-service, multi-trade capability to the growing network.

The five partners, in order

To understand what Grizzly has built, it helps to walk through each partnership and what it contributed to the platform.

Stiles Heating & Cooling (Stiles Services) was announced at launch in May 2025 and served as the platform's foundation. A founder-owned provider of HVAC, building controls, and plumbing services across Georgia and South Carolina.

Air Design Systems (ADS) joined in July 2025. Founded in 1977 and headquartered in Pensacola, Florida, ADS is a full-service mechanical and plumbing contractor with nearly five decades of experience in design-build, negotiated, and plan/spec work. The company operates in-house sheet metal fabrication and custom ductwork capabilities — a meaningful operational asset — and expanded Grizzly's presence into the Florida market.

Excel Mechanical Contractors was added in September 2025. Based in Baltimore and serving the Mid-Atlantic region across eight states, Excel specializes in mission-critical projects for federal government agencies, healthcare systems, data centers, and industrial facilities. This partnership was strategically significant: it brought Grizzly into the Mid-Atlantic, added full electrical contracting capability, and opened the door to the federal government sector — a durable, often recession-resistant revenue stream.

Vermont Mechanical Incorporated became the fourth partner in October 2025, marking Grizzly's entry into New England. Vermont Mechanical is a full-service mechanical contractor positioned as the anchor for further Northeast expansion. The regional sequencing here — Southeast to Florida to Mid-Atlantic to New England — reflects a deliberate geographic buildout rather than opportunistic deal-by-deal expansion.

Stegall Mechanical, announced in May 2026, rounds out the current platform. As noted, Stegall's three-division structure and deep Alabama roots make it a logical anchor for Grizzly's continued Southeast growth. CEO John Adams described the partnership as a natural next step for geographic expansion and platform value creation.

What the structure actually looks like

Grizzly is operating in a market it describes as approximately $500 billion — a figure that reflects the full scope of commercial MEP services in the U.S., encompassing installation, service, maintenance, and specialty work across virtually every end market. The fragmentation in that space is real: most commercial MEP contractors are still founder- or family-owned, operate regionally, and have limited access to the capital and infrastructure that would allow them to grow into larger, more complex projects.

Grizzly's approach is to provide that capital and infrastructure without stripping the operating companies of what makes them effective. Each partner retains its brand, its management team, and the customer relationships those teams have spent decades building. What changes is the back-office support, the access to capital for growth, and the ability to pursue larger and more technically complex work under the platform umbrella.

The commercial MEP thesis

Grizzly's focus on commercial MEP — rather than residential — reflects a specific bet on the structural tailwinds in that segment. Demand for sustainable and energy-efficient building systems is driving HVAC and controls upgrades across commercial real estate. Data center construction is creating significant need for specialized MEP work, particularly electrical and mechanical systems capable of handling high-density computing loads. Healthcare and federal government facilities require contractors with the technical depth, licensing, and bonding capacity to execute complex projects under tight regulatory requirements. These aren't episodic demand drivers — they're structural, and they tend to reward contractors with the scale to compete for larger project scopes.

For smaller commercial MEP contractors, the challenge has always been that the capital requirements to pursue these larger opportunities — bonding capacity, equipment, trained labor — can outpace what a single independent firm can sustain. A platform like Grizzly solves that problem while preserving the local reputation and customer trust that took decades to earn.

What this means for the market

Less than eighteen months into its existence, Grizzly MEP has demonstrated a replicable playbook in a sector that is still in the early stages of institutional consolidation. The commercial MEP trades have lagged residential service in attracting private equity attention, in part because the complexity of the work — larger projects, longer cycles, more sophisticated customers — makes the roll-up thesis harder to execute. Grizzly's early results suggest that complexity is surmountable with the right platform structure and the right operating partners.

For owners of commercial MEP businesses evaluating their options, the Grizzly model offers a clearer picture of what a partnership-based exit can look like in this space. It is not the typical sell-and-exit structure. It is, by design, a continuation of the business with institutional backing — one that retains the management team, preserves the brand, and positions the company to take on work that would have been out of reach as a standalone.

For operators, buyers, and market observers across the trades, Grizzly MEP is a platform worth watching. Five partnerships in twelve months, across five distinct geographies, in a sector that has historically resisted consolidation — that is a meaningful proof of concept.