Carlton Shores

As you know from Monday's post, we are up for a Reader's Choice Award as part of the Detroit Home Design Awards with our residential design called Carlton Shores. Here is a more in-depth introduction to this contemporary twist on the American lodge:

A fresh take on a time-tested favorite can be risky, but the Carlton Shores design is an example of a risk worth taking. This sprawling cottage harkens back to the Arts & Crafts revival, while still managing to exude contemporary appeal. The home sits on the property like a great hunting lodge with its use of exposed wood trim and brackets. A striking array of windows gives the exterior an inviting look, as if to defy the elements and welcome nature right in.

Simplicity rules the interior of the home, leaving the dramatic decorating to the outside views. A creative use of natural materials, such as wood and marble, compliment the flora-and-fauna focus of the home’s aesthetic. Every wall is dominated by glass. Windows of every shape and size allow residents to take in their surroundings, while creating a spacious, open atmosphere. The curving wooden staircase with its high ceilings gives the impression you are climbing into the trees.

A soaring two-story vaulted ceiling covers the indoor pool area, which includes a kitchenette and sitting room. Glass doors open out to a vanishing pool and sundeck. All of this has been designed with the stunning lake vistas in mind. A beautiful deck and boardwalk lead from the house down to the shore, giving homeowners beach access.












Don't forget to vote for this beauty before January 20! Click here to read instructions on how to cast your vote.

We need your votes!

It's time again for the Detroit Home Design awards and we need your votes! We are up for a reader's choice Best Overall Home Award with one of our projects, Carlton Shores. Here is how to cast your vote...

Step 1: Visit Detroit Home Design Awards' ballot webpage for the 2012 Reader's Choice for Best Overall Home:
Step 2: Scroll down and select Carlton Shores, which is Entry #6.
Step 3: Scroll down to the bottom of the page where you are asked to enter your email address, answer a simple math question and then click, "Place your vote!"

The deadline for voting is January 20, 2012, so please cast your vote now and pass this along to all of your friends and family. We need as many votes as possible to hopefully win our first ever Detroit Home Design Awards Reader's Choice!

In this Holiday Season, we reflect on the past year and are grateful for those who have helped to shape our business. We value your business, your support, your interest, and your feedback and look forward to working with all of you in the years to come.

We wish you a very Merry Christmas and a happy New Year filled with peace and prosperity.


Harbor Shores made The New York Times!

Harbor Shores, the "emerald oasis" of Benton Harbor, MI, was featured in The New York Times last week in the article featured below outlining the history of Benton Harbor, its past and present economic challenges and the hopeful resurgence that developments like Harbor Shores will bring.

Visbeen Associates is proud to be a part of Harbor Shores and the revival of Benton Harbor and the home we designed can be seen in the multimedia slideshow of the article!



Mark Peterson/Redux, for the New York Times

On the northern edge of Benton Harbor, just beyond the grim grid of housing projects, shuttered storefronts, boarded-up homes and junk-laden yards that dominate much of the town, sits an emerald oasis known as Harbor Shores. As the name suggests, Harbor Shores is a resort development. At its heart is a pristine Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course that meanders along a river and creek; through woods and wetlands; and, most striking, across tall, white sand dunes overlooking Lake Michigan.

Multimedia

Readers’ Comments

Readers shared their thoughts on this article.

The golf course was built largely on fallow, polluted land that was once crowded with factories: holes No. 4 and No. 5 were the slag pit for a company that made automobile brakes. Holes No. 14 and 15 were a former Superfund site once occupied by a company that used radium and mercury to manufacture components for fighter planes.

Metaphorically speaking, Harbor Shores is supposed to have a similarly salutary effect on the poor, overwhelmingly black town that surrounds it. No mere resort, it was envisioned by its developers as a “single, signature project to drive economic development and bring social change to Benton Harbor,” in the words of one promotional video.

In late August, I played the course with a foursome of hackers that included Marcus Robinson, who helped lead the effort to build the resort. A heavy African-American man, Robinson wore khaki shorts, an orange Harbor Shores golf shirt and matching Harbor Shores straw hat. It was a sticky day, and he guzzled Gatorade as he liberated large chunks of turf that on more than one occasion outflew his ball. “It’s such a beautiful property,” he said as he bent over to fill a large divot with grass seed. “It’s a shame to duff it up.”

Robinson is president of the Consortium for Community Development. The consortium is one of several local nonprofits partly financed by the Whirlpool Corporation, which is based in Benton Harbor, to help encourage the redevelopment of the town. He took up golf at the urging of his girlfriend two years ago, just after construction began on Harbor Shores. “She was like, ‘You don’t want to be out here on opening day and have the ball go two inches in front of you at the first tee,’ ” he told me. “Of course, that’s exactly what happened. On my first drive, the ball didn’t even go out of the tee box.”

Robinson, who is 53, went to graduate school for hypnotherapy, the art of inducing trances to change behavioral patterns, before becoming a corporate consultant in Rochester, N.Y. He was brought to Benton Harbor by Whirlpool as a “diversity consultant” in early 2001. His assignment was to work with community leaders, businesspeople and other local residents to come up with ways to address some of the ever-worsening problems — poverty, violence, white flight, racial strife — that had been plaguing the city for years and were making it increasingly difficult for Whirlpool to attract executive talent to the area. The discussions helped birth Harbor Shores, a notion that had been kicking around a long while.

Given Benton Harbor’s unfavorable history and demographics, no private developer would likely be willing to take on such an ambitious project there. But there was another way: Robinson’s group, along with other nonprofits supported by Whirlpool, could secure enough federal and state grant money to help remediate the land, build the golf course and at least get Harbor Shores off the ground. The project’s complicated financing deal closed in May 2008, right around the time that the national real-estate market crashed.

On the Thursday morning that we played Harbor Shores, the course looked virtually empty. The blueprints call for the 530-acre resort to include high-end hotels and shops and quaint marinas, but as of now it’s basically just a golf course. The first of hundreds of planned houses are going up on cul de sacs with names like Golden Bear Court...


Architectural Tutorial: Mountain Style

Rugged. Sturdy. Warm. Strong-featured. Cozy. Textured. Rustic.

These are all words that can be used to describe a Mountain Style home. This type of architecture is meant to "blend in with the natural environment" with characteristics like extensive use of stone and timber for building materials. It has more to do with "materials and details than house type" and has characteristics that include over-hanging roofs, small paned windows and ornamentation with natural elements like logs and branches. It offers an "expression of nostalgia for the simpler life of the Colonists who'd founded the United States with little more than a musket and an ax." But what used to be equated as a style for hunting lodges, vacation homes, cabins, dude ranches or tourist-related facilities in national parks is now becoming more prevalent in primary residences. Many modern day Mountain Style residences even pull elements from several other architectural styles like Craftsman/Arts and Crafts, Shingle and Bungalow.

A few well-known examples of Mountain Style architecture include...

The Old Faithful Inn • Yellowstone National Park, WY
image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/txcraig75/4941478551/

The Crater Lake Lodge • Crater Lake National Park, OR
image source: http://www.lovesomatic.info/vacation-rentals/the-crater-lake-lodge.html

Ahwahnee Hotel • Yosemite Valley, CA
image source: http://www.vinetimesonline.com/destination/2010/8/2/destination-amador-to-mariposa.html

Dining room of Ahwahnee Hotel
image source: http://yosemitefun.com/ahwahnee.htm

Glacier Park Lodge • Glacier National Park, MT
image source: http://www.flickriver.com/groups/371396@N20/pool/interesting/

One of the boathouses at Topridge, an Adirondack Great Camp in New York.
image source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Boathouse_2_at_Topridge.jpg

Lake McDonald Lodge • Glacier National Park, MT
image source: http://www.flickriver.com/groups/371396@N20/pool/interesting/


We have clients that are drawn to this style because of its warmth, relaxed feel and its connection to the outdoors. Here are a few of Visbeen Associates' Mountain Style designs...

Bear Tooth Lodge

Camp Roger


Woodlea


Gray Drake Lodge



Sources:
http://www.historycolorado.org/sites/default/files/files/OAHP/crforms_edumat/pdfs/1642.pdf
http://www.antiquehomestyle.com/styles/rustic.htm

Make-A-Wish Offices

Wayne and Ryan had the opportunity to design the office space for the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Michigan. Check out these photos of the finished office from their recent open house!





Staff Post by Wayne Visbeen

I have had the privilege of playing some of the most revered golf courses in the world in the past 15 years. Many of these classics have been in the East Coast, which has a wonderful tradition of great courses, and for me, even better, great clubhouses. In the East I have played, Oakmont, Oakhill, Baltusrol, Winged Foot, Merion, and most recently Ridgewood Country Club. These courses have all hosted PGA events and have a long tradition of golfing excellence. Several of these courses have two things in common that I want to refer to today: golf course Architect, A.W. Tillinghast and Architect Clifford C. Wendehack. Wendehack worked most prolifically in the 20’s and was responsible for some of my favorite clubhouse designs.

Winged Foot’s Clubhouse is considered by many the quintessential clubhouse and is one of the most beautiful I have visited.

Winged Foot
Mamaroneck, NY

Pennhills Country Club
Bradford, PA

Visbeen Associates has been selected to begin a process of master planning and designing several elements of the Ridgewood Country Club prior to their hosting the Barclays Event the summer of 2014. We are developing a practice facility and doing an addition and pro shop renovation. The future plans include a new pool, pool house, exercise facility and updated kitchen and dining areas. During this time, I have had the luxury of playing the course a few times and enjoying the beauty of this world-class facility. It is a great opportunity to become a part of architectural history.

Rendering of Ridgewood Country Club

Ridgewood Country Club
Paramus, NJ






Sketches done for Ridgewood Country Club

We are also working on another Wendehack Club, Hackensack Country Club in Ordell, N.J. to look at a new pool house and pool facility.

Hackensack Golf Club
Oradell, NJ




Highfield Progress

We recently received these images of the progress being made on the Highfield residence. It's really coming along!







This will be the final product: