During the Home Builders Association of Connecticut’s recent 2003 Home Building Industry Awards Dinner, Prutting & Co. earned Spec Home of the Year honors for its work at 81 Cross Ridge Road in New Canaan.
With nods toward the new and recognition of the tried and true, the annual Home Building Industry Awards recently recognized this year’s best designs and services.
With categories ranging from Best Spec Home to Best Home Loan, the awards cover the breadth of the construction industry. The Home Builders Association of Connecticut’s Home Building Industry (HOBI) Awards are presented annually for excellence in design, construction, land development, sales and marketing, and financing by members of the organization.
During HBA of Connecticut’s recent 2003 Home Building Industry Awards Dinner, Middletown-based Liberty Bank’s construction-permanent mortgage loan was voted the Best Construction-Permanent Custom Home Loan. This was the fifth year in a row that Liberty has won the award.
“We’re very proud that our construction-permanent loan has earned this honor for five consecutive years,” said Deborah Bochain, executive vice president for personal lending at Liberty Bank. “We designed this loan to make it easier for people to finance the building of a home and to make a smooth, seamless transition from construction to permanent financing.”
Among the features that distinguish Liberty’s construction-permanent mortgage are the facts that the interest rate is the same as the rate for the bank’s conventional mortgages for loans up to $400,000, the value of the land can be included in the loan amount and only one closing is required.
Established in 1825, Liberty Bank is Connecticut’s oldest mutual bank, with more than 170,000 customers and 33 banking offices throughout the central, eastern, and shoreline areas of the state.
Prutting & Co., which is co-owned by husband and wife team David and Deborah Prutting, earned Spec Home of the Year honors at the awards banquet for their work at 81 Cross Ridge Road in New Canaan.
“It’s a pretty remarkable place, if I do say so myself,” said David Prutting of the home in which he lives. The house was originally constructed in 1951 in the Elliot Noyes International style. New Canaan actually has quite a few homes of that same architectural style built in the 1950s and beyond.
“This was a fairly prominent home that sits on a beautiful piece of land on hillside. There is a lot of privacy, so a glasshouse makes sense,” said Prutting. The Pruttings purchased the home in 1998 and, after living there for three years, decided that it clearly needed renovation. The mechanical systems were out of date and ineffective, and the single-glazed glass windows weren’t enough to insulate the heat and sound inside the house.
“That era of design, the 1950s, was about austerity,” said Prutting. “They wanted minimal materials and systems in small houses. But here we are in New Canaan on a piece of property worth a million and a half [dollars], and we’re not going to have a 2,500-square-foot spare, lean house.”
The conclusion was to tear the house down and rebuild it in the same style with a more contemporary floor plan and mechanical system. The Pruttings hired architect Job Moore of Greenwich to handle the design, for which he has received two Connecticut American Institute of Architects awards.
“He’s excellent,” said Prutting. “I’ve worked with him in the past, and we felt that this was in his vernacular.”
‘Against the Grain’
Prutting said what’s unique about the home is the fact that it’s a luxury house built in an international modernist style. It has three stories, whereas most homes built in the same style only have one level. There is a ground floor, a floor on top of that at grade and a third floor that hovers on top, creating the illusion that it’s disconnected from the rest of the house. All of the exterior walls are glass.
“It’s a very eclectic and unique design, very far from spare, lean or austere. It’s actually quite luxurious and has all the bells and whistles that today’s contemporary buyers are looking for,” he said.
The house contains state-of-the-art mechanical systems and is engineered with heating-cooling systems unique to the design of the house, including a system for introducing a constant supply of fresh air. A hefty investment was made in the glass, which includes top-of-the-line glazing.
“The glass is remarkably efficient in terms of heat and sound retention,” said Prutting. “This is just a well-built house.”
Entering the contest was something of an afterthought for the Pruttings.
“You associate this category with grandiose projects – these large sumptuous projects that are very different from our design. We were impressed that this jury picked up on what we were doing,” said Prutting. “This house has no trim, and is sort against the grain of your typical new construction. It’s a different style and aesthetic that they may be used to.”
He added, “We were surprised that this jury was so open-minded. They appreciated the lines and planar of the house, and we were impressed that they were impressed. We’re flattered.”
The Greyrock Cos., whose Hamilton Way project won Best Cluster Development at the 2002 awards, received the award for Community of the Year for Pepper Woods.
Pepper Woods is located off Pepper Ridge Road in Stamford on what used to be property owned by the Connecticut Humane Society. Despite some confrontation with neighbors, who didn’t want the development built, the community was erected and sold out rapidly.
“It’s funny. The neighbors didn’t want us there and now we’re winning an award for the Community of the Year,” said Sandy Effren, design consultant with the Greyrock Cos.
The development contains 14 cluster homes arranged in a neighborhood design. While the development had been initially targeted at upper-middle-class families and empty nesters, the community has attracted a diverse mix of living situations. Effren explained that young families, dual-income couples, single women and a few empty nesters now call Pepper Woods home.
“It’s truly a neighborhood. We thought it would go one way, as far as our target market was concerned, but it didn’t,” she said.
The Pepper Woods development sold out rather quickly, as the last house is closing next month.
Effren cites the quality of construction as well as included amenities as reasons the community was chosen for the award. Everything from screened-in porches to wine bars to fully furnished home theaters were offered and included in the homes. The houses were listed toward the higher end, with prices starting at $850,000 and the highest-priced home selling just shy of $1.1 million.
“This was an older residential neighborhood with smaller homes, so this development instantly raised the value of the surrounding houses,” said Effren. “This was always a nice neighborhood, but it wasn’t upscale.”
The community also garnered the award for Project Manager of the Year. Kim Hiteshaw, the project manager, worked to ensure that homes were completely finished before owners moved in.
“There wasn’t a single punch-list item when they moved in,” said Effren. “The homes were as close to perfect as they could have been. You could call every homeowner in that development and they would tell you how happy they are, and how happy they were with Kim.”
The model home set up at the development also won the Interior Merchandising Award.
“So I guess you could say we swept the awards this year at HOBI,” joked Effren. She noted that Greyrock has been in business for many years and has several award-winning developments to its credit. Currently, the group is work on Milbank Ridge, a development in Greenwich, and Oyster Bend Condominiums in Norwalk.
Other top awards included Landsen Construction’s 630 Oakwood Drive in Glastonbury as Custom Home of the Year and Hobbs Inc.’s North Street residence in Greenwich earning Remodeled Home of the Year.
The HBA of Connecticut is a statewide professional trade organization representing homebuilders, remodelers and developers, as well as subcontractors, suppliers and professionals that provide services to the industry. Some 1,050 member companies belong to its five local association chapters.
