Local Architect Offers One-Stop Shopping

The experienced will tell you building a custom home from the ground up can be the best thing they’ve ever done, or the worst.

Most of the time, an architect draws the plans and hands them to the client.

The client then, sometimes in collaboration with the architect, interviews potential builders to facilitate the job within a stated time and budget. 

For the most part, the process works. But there are the horror stories of the subsequent cracked foundation, the leaky roof, or the contractor who left town without finishing the job. 

But what if the custom home you want to build could be taken care of by one organization?

Think: One-stop shopping.

Besides sketching designs, architect Alan Blair, founder and owner of Alan Blair & Associates, will get you turning the key to your dream home after overseeing the master builder, plumbers, electricians and painters, all coming together to complete the project.

According to Blair, the concept works and is a way for him to stay involved, resulting in more teamwork and less pointing of fingers.

“We begin with a vision for a house or business that we can follow through on,” says Blair, 61, who started his firm in 1981 in Berlin.

He added the construction management sector in 1991, soon after a commercial client— for whom Blair was designing a liquor store for—insisted he take the “job from beginning to end.”

Sometimes there can be friction between an architect and a contractor, so blending the two professions can help alleviate that.

“Problems arise out in the field that you might not be able to anticipate,” adds Blair. “This method helps keep change orders to a minimum.”

It’s a stifling day at a job site off of Hartford Road in Moorestown. The sound of rocks being crushed fills the air as tractors rumble across the grounds, where crews are building a 16,000-square-foot home, which will have six bedrooms, a gourmet kitchen, movie theater, and an elaborate sauna on the second floor.

The complete experience, from beginning to end, is being supervised by Blair and his team.

Michael Wilkinson, 31, another principal in the firm who handles the business development sector of the company, says folks like being able to call just one person, instead of a subcontractor here and there.

“It’s total integration,” says Wilkinson. “We’re the ones doing all of the communicating with the contractors.”

Wilkinson says the company opened an office in Cinnaminson at 101 Route 130 South last year. Six years ago, the company was mostly involved in residential work.

“Now, we are doing about 50 percent commercial,” he says. The firm has also done construction on a number of buildings on Main Street in Moorestown. 

Currently at the top of the list of requests from clients building their own homes is better methods to make a house tight—warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer.

“Everyone is trying to save pennies,” says Blair.

Aesthetics is still popular, but with new materials. Vinyl siding, which has dramatically replaced wood siding over the past decade, is now being used in roofing. 

On the large estate being erected on Hartford Road, for example, the homeowners opted for a roof in black vinyl, made to appear as black slate. Blair says this material costs about 15 percent more than other roofing elements and can be more labor-intensive.

“People are more educated about the housing process,” says Blair. “They don’t want to be bothered with replacing large items down the line if they can avoid it.”