Community Minded

JOE PUSATERI WAS ON THE HOME builder fast track.

A custom home builder, Pusateri was president of the Louisville, Ky., HBA by the time he was in his mid-30s. He was active on national committees for the NAHB, and he was expected to become president of the state HBA. He was even considering a future run for the NAHB presidency.

Then he learned more about his city.

In 1989, Pusateri joined Leadership Louisville, a year-long leadership development and civic education course. Each class spends one day per month learning about different aspects of the community.

That's when Pusateri realized how little most residents knew about home builders. “I thought, at the time, that I could do better for our industry and get out in the community and represent the HBA,” recalls Pusateri, president of Elite Homes, which builds several dozen custom homes each year. He pushed his aspirations of higher HBA offices aside and dove into a variety of activities centered on life in Louisville.

NEAR AND FAR: Joe Pusateri opted to volunteer for charities in Louisville, Ky., and abroad rather than run for HBA offices.

In a little more than a decade, Pusateri has involved himself in almost every aspect of the community, from the redevelopment of economically depressed neighborhoods to financial support for the arts. Along the way, he's involved many of his peers, garnering support for the area's charities they might not have otherwise received.

Leadership Louisville sparked Pusateri's interest in community service. He joined several local boards of directors and became involved in the United Way. His participation in Bingham Fellows in 1993 stoked the fire.

Bingham Fellows participants, chosen from Leadership Louisville alumni, develop solutions for a particular issue facing the community. Christine Johnson, president of the Leadership Louisville Center, which runs both programs, says Pusateri was a natural choice. “I always use him as an example of what the Bingham Fellows program is about,” she says. “He's not one to sit around and study something to death. He's a doer.”

At the time, the country was still reeling from the aftermath of the Los Angeles riots. For that reason, the group chose to focus on redeveloping Smoketown, a troubled Louisville neighborhood with high unemployment and low hopes.

Pusateri recognized that he could bring his own professional expertise to the program by building Homearama, Louisville's annual parade of homes, in Smoketown. New homes hadn't been built in the area for more than 60 years.

Bingham Fellows overcame initial resistance from wary Smoketown residents and the HBA, which had eyed other neighborhoods for the traditionally high-end homes, and organized the construction of 12 new homes for Homearama. Elite Homes, built three.

Since then, Smoketown has undergone a revival. Another 50 homes and a community center have been built, and the first new retail businesses in decades opened. “It rekindled hope in the people of Smoke-town,” Pusateri says. “There had been so many promises made there that were never fulfilled. But this actually happened.”

Channel 15, Louisville's public television station, approached Pusateri with a different kind of community service opportunity, one that's evolved and that continues today: The station asked if Elite would build and sell a home and donate the profits to it.

At the time, Elite built about 30 homes a year, and Pusateri thought the company could make it without the profits from one of them. He built the home and donated $22,000 in profits to Channel 15. He went on to build and donate the profits from four more homes to the station, totaling more than $200,000 in gifts; $80,000 in profits from two others went to Habitat for Humanity.

Through Leadership Louisville, which Johnson refers to as “the human resources department for the city,” Pusateri joined the board of directors of Family Place, a child abuse treatment agency, in 1994. Once there, he volunteered to build a house and donate the profits to the organization. Again, he exceeded his promise: Over five years, Elite built and donated $167,000 from three homes. Family Place used the funds as seed money to start other programs that eventually drew additional resources to the organization, says Joe Roehrig, Family Place's former executive director.

Along the way, Pusateri learned a lot about building charity homes. The first year, for Channel 15, he simply asked his major subcontractors and suppliers to donate or discount something for the house. “Over the years,” he says, “I have learned to go into every category in the house. For a lot of years, I never thought to ask for free blueprints or dumpsters.”

Donations are organized on a spreadsheet. With each new home, Pusateri or one of his employees calls and asks the vendors or subs to give what they did the year before. And he's made the donation more of a celebration: He now has 15-foot mock checks made, which he gives to the charity in a presentation with subcontractors and suppliers.

More experience has expanded Pusateri's horizons. His last two charity homes have been built to benefit the Evergreen Charitable Education Foundation, which runs two orphanages and a rescue center in Romania.

Pusateri volunteered to build the first home, dubbed the “Home of Hope,” with little first-hand knowledge of the plight of Romanian orphans. He then took an eight-day, eye-opening trip to the country. With the help of its subs and vendors, Elite cleared $165,000 for Evergreen, more than double what had been made previously on a charity home.

Elite recently completed its second home for Evergreen, raising $145,000. It's a cause Pusateri has found passion for. He intends to bring employees with him on a trip back to Romania, and he's committed to building more homes for the charity. “I don't know how far that means, but I'm hoping it will be for about 20 years,” says Jerry McCandless, Evergreen's president.

Pusateri might be best known throughout Louisville for his efforts to keep the city's 67-year-old orchestra out of bankruptcy in 2003.

A combination of poor management, diminishing proceeds from its endowment, and fewer ticket sales had left the orchestra on the verge of bankruptcy, and the organization and its musicians were at an impasse over wage cuts.

Pusateri, a ticket holder to the orchestra's Pops series, says he expected someone to come forward with a solution to save the orchestra. “Something in the back of my head said that person was going to be me,” he recalls. After a call to the orchestra's president, Pusateri put the wheels in motion to halt the bankruptcy. He made a personal donation of $100,000, vowed to drum up another $465,000 from the home building industry, and helped to win concessions from the musicians.

“If he didn't appear on the scene, I am confident that the orchestra would have gone under,” says executive director Scott Provancher. Pusateri leveraged his contacts outside of the traditional orchestra base to cultivate a new crop of supporters, Provancher adds. “He's been very effective in telling the story that you might not go to the orchestra, but if the city doesn't have it, it's not the kind of city you want to live in.”

Pusateri, who will become president of the orchestra's board in May, says he helped other builders connect the dots between the orchestra and their own businesses. The orchestra's bankruptcy would have hurt them, he explained.

Other builders followed his lead once they saw his own level of commitment, he says. “I want to lead by example. I'm not going to ask anyone to do something that I'm not committed to,” Pusateri says. “Some people I persuade, some I coerce, and some I have to cheer on. I use whatever strategy I have to.”

Joseph Pusateri
Age: 53
Company: Elite Homes, Louisville, Ky.
Title: President
Charitable Work: Family Place; Evergreen Charitable Education Foundation; Louisville Orchestra; Metro United Way; Salvation Army; Boy Scouts; University of Louisville; Habitat for Humanity
Award: $100,000

Once again, Hearthstone and BUILDER have selected three builders to receive honorable mentions for their charitable work and contributions. They are:

Ralph Drees, chairman, The Drees Co., Fort Mitchell, Ky.

Ron Terwilliger, chairman and CEO, Trammell Crow Residential, Atlanta

Stephen A. Goldberg, president, The Stephen A. Goldberg Co., Washington

The judges were asked to measure the nominees' charitable activities against these six criteria:

Bernard Drueding III, president, B.J. Drueding Builders, and a 2002 recipient of the Hearthstone BUILDER Lifetime Public Service Award

J. Roger Glunt, CEO, Jayar Construction/Glunt Development, and a 2004 recipient of the Hearthstone BUILDER Lifetime Public Service Award

David K. Hill, CEO, Kimball Hill Homes, and a 2004 recipient of the Hearthstone BUILDER Lifetime Public Service Award

Lewis S. Ranieri, chairman and CEO, Ranieri & Co.

Nicolas P. Retsinas, director, Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies

Stacey Stewart, president and CEO, Fannie Mae Foundation

Robert J. Strudler, COO, Lennar Corp., and the 2003 grand award winner of the Hearthstone BUILDER Lifetime Public Service Award

Lee Wetherington, CEO, Lee Wetherington Homes, and a 2003 recipient of the Hearthstone BUILDER Lifetime Public Service Award

John Wieland, chairman, John Wieland Homes and Neighborhoods, and the 2002 grand award winner of the Hearthstone BUILDER Lifetime Public Service Award