Magazine features area firm's mansion

Joe St. Jean, in his Maumee office with his design for a 7,200-square-foot home to built in Maryland, said he focuses on the needs of his clients for a functional and aesthetically pleasing home. THE BLADE/LORI KING Enlarge | Photo Reprints

Joe St. Jean believes that cookie cutters are for bakers, not architects.

He works for Maumee-based Scholz Design Inc. and doesn't take a one-size-fits-all approach to home design. By homing in on the needs of his clients, Mr. St. Jean said he's able to create homes that are aesthetically pleasing and functional.

Mr. St. Jean, 58, has created custom designs that range from sprawling mansions larger than 10,000 square feet to modest homes for first-time buyers or retirees.

"I was born to make the world beautiful," said Mr. St. Jean, who is licensed in 17 states and has designed many projects throughout the county and a few abroad.

Former NFL quarterback Jeff Hostetler, Arizona Cardinals linebacker Joey Porter, and former major league baseball pitcher Andy Ashby all purchased home designs from Scholz Design. NBA star LeBron James had one of the company's designs modified for a house he built, and entertainer Regis Philbin lives in a Scholz Design home in Greenwich, Conn.

A home Mr. St. Jean designed recently was featured in Exceptional Properties, a magazine that highlights luxury homes. The 12,000-squre-foot Tuscan manor is the dream home of Murry Gerber, a retired energy executive. It's nestled on a 33-acre hillside overlooking Pittsburgh.

The six-bedroom mansion is a home Mr. Gerber said his wife and six children can enjoy as they age. It features large bathrooms and expanded doorways that could accommodate a wheelchair.

The home is meant to grow with the family by design. Most of his children are teenagers.

"It really accommodates their needs and does it in a style that's probably not done today," Mr. Gerber said.

The six-bedroom, 12,000-square-foot Tuscan manor was featured in Exceptional Properties, a magazine highlighting luxury homes. SCHOLZ DESIGN Enlarge

The home's design was inspired by Baldassare Tommaso Peruzzi, an architect and painter who lived during the Renaissance. It features a great hall with acoustics that would be perfect for chamber music, Mr. Gerber said.

The home contains locally produced stone columns and other hand-crafted materials. It cost about $4.8 million to construct.

Picking the right person to design the home was a feat, Mr. Gerber said. Several architects were interviewed, including one who had been commissioned for work at the Vatican.

Mr. St. Jean was chosen because he was able to take Mr. Gerber's ideas and conceptualize them. He didn't redesign the project to his own liking, which was the problem with many of the other candidates, Mr. Gerber said.

"He listens extraordinarily well; then what he does is he sketches," he said. "He would take a thought and then he would sketch something, and we would work back and forth with ideas and sketches. Once the sketches matched the idea, he'd work on the detail and the design."

When it came time for Risa Kennedy and her husband to build their 6,000-square-foot home in Dyer, Ind., the couple turned to Scholz Design. They fell in love with some of the plans the firm has for its clients to peruse.

Mrs. Kennedy said it was easy to maintain a clear line of communication with Mr. St. Jean and the design team, which isn't always the case. Although employees from Scholz Design do travel for client meetings, the bulk of the work is done over the phone or via e-mail.

"As it happens, we did have a different architect on my last home. The last guy didn't listen to what we said and we had to have the drawings redone several times," she said.

Mrs. Kennedy, a 55-year-old who recently became a grandmother, said she moved into her home in 2005 and it is the center of her family's gatherings.

The kitchen and family area were expanded during the design process so they could accommodate large groups. The home cost about $1.5 million to build.

"There isn't anything I thought, 'Jeez, I wish we did this differently or had done that,' " she said, adding that's highly unusual for her. "I haven't even changed any of the [interior] designs. There isn't anything we would have done different."

Scholz Design differs from other firms because its plans are comprehensive, said Christopher Gibson, president and CEO of the company. There aren't gaps for builders to fill in later, he added.

The company, which is privately held, does not release how many projects it designs each year or its number of employees.

Although the housing-design market has taken a hit because of the recession, the trick to staying on top is simple: client cooperation, no matter the budget, Mr. Gibson said.

"It doesn't matter if someone is building a 2,500-square-foot house or a 15,000-square-foot house," Mr. Gibson said. "We all grew up in the Midwest, and that's just the kind of people we are."

Contact Kris Turner at: kturner@theblade.com or 419-724-6103.