Day in the Life: Ahead Of The Curve

A tuxedoed stephen paul capped off a busy Thursday in October by accepting four design awards from two local HBAs in front of 1,200 of his similarly clad peers. It was an honor the executive vice president of Mid-Atlantic Builders has experienced many times before, as two trophy-stuffed glass cases in the firm's Rockville, Md., headquarters attest.

Paul later lamented that his pet property, the airy, best-selling Somerset—the first model he designed by himself and one that has won the associations' coveted local Monument Award four times already—didn't reap another of the pyramid-shaped prizes. He concedes: “Four ... is not too bad for our small company.”

Indeed, this 52-employee firm is doing better than “not too bad” along a stretch that Paul calls the “Mid-Atlantic corridor” in Prince George's County, Md., the onetime struggling “ugly sister” of Montgomery County, the state's most affluent, right next door.

Along that corridor, the 26-year-old company is building $1 million mansions as fast as the now-prosperous county's growing population of affluent blacks, drawn to the bedroom community of Bowie, just a few miles from the nation's capital, can buy them.

A WORKING PARTNERSHIP: Mid-Atlantic Cos.' three partners (John Lavery, vice president of sales and marketing, Roger Lebbin, and Stephen Paul) pore over a map of one of their Prince George's County, Md., subdivisions displayed in a model home.

“Not only is it amazing that they can do homes like that in Prince George's County, but they've been doing them for some time,” notes marketing consultant Brenda Desjardins, owner of New Home Marketing Services in Annapolis, Md. “Mid-Atlantic saw a substantial niche in the market and really built into it.”

The morning of the awards ceremony, the business of building those homes begins shortly after 7 a.m., when Paul, a onetime land planner who took some college architecture courses and went on to earn an MBA, arrives at work and starts tweaking plans on a drafting table.

On the wall behind the table hang three colorful crayon drawings of homes for sale, a long-ago gift from his now college-age son.

Seeing them conjures a scene from Paul's own childhood: When his parents would not acquiesce to the 8-year-old's demands to populate his train-board village with buildings, he built some Erector Set properties and scribbled “future building” on empty plots.

Yet even as a college student, Paul did not foresee his foray into home building. It wasn't until 1990, five years after he partnered with Mid-Atlantic Cos. president Roger Lebbin, that the two expanded their land development firm into home building. That year, the builders they had developed a subdivision for went out of business, leaving the pair with an unsold, unbuilt community.

“We turned that lemon around after being stuck with that piece of property,” says Paul, who, with Lebbin, built 139 homes on the land. “It was almost a no-brainer.”

But Lebbin's passion was for developing the land, not building the houses. So he made Paul the head of Mid-Atlantic Builders and remained at the helm of Mid-Atlantic Cos. Since then, Paul has overseen the building of 1,056 homes in more than 20 communities, mostly in Prince George's County, where he is exercising his own passion for design.

At a meeting of Mid-Atlantic Builders' managers, a report by John Dorsey, who heads field production, tells the story of how Paul's designs—and the company's homes and operations—have changed.

In 2003, he tells 10 managers in a map-filled conference room, the firm closed on 136 homes, measuring an average of 3,700 square feet. This year, it will finish about 110 units averaging 5,400 square feet. And as the homes have gotten bigger, the number of options—from sunrooms and home theaters to art niches and grandiose, glass-block–enclosed “shower spas”—has increased into the thousands.

“We indexed every customer request and made them available,” Paul explains.

He adds, “We're still a production builder. ... I'm a mass producer of custom ideas.”

Those ideas, inspired largely by Paul's trips to Europe—notably, Italy—include lots of curves: on drywall, glass blocks, exterior walls, balconies, kitchen islands, staircases, and even tiled whirlpool bathtub surrounds.

“Lumber is straight, but it doesn't always have to appear that way,” says Lebbin, who readily boasts about his partner's creativity. “We all work with boxes. Our box is a little bit different because it's full of angles and curves.”

Lebbin admits the collection of curvaceous options slows cycle times and ruffles some subs. “It's hard and expensive,” he says. “They say it's too much trouble. But we say nothing is too much trouble.”

He adds, “We know we're doing this the best of anybody in the market.”

Indeed, notes Desjardins, other upscale home builders have entered Prince George's County because of Mid-Atlantic's success. For years, she recalls, Bowie housing was geared toward middle-class buyers. “Mid-Atlantic tried to reach a market that was higher than that with what they put into the homes,” she says. “Other builders came in based on what they saw with Mid-Atlantic.”

Paul says those competitors give him incentive to add architectural details that other builders haven't considered in a market that favors traditional, two-story colonials, such as front and back staircases that are not visible from the entry door, round foyers, tray ceilings, two-story kitchens, oversized kids' rooms, and first-floor master suites.

Paul and Lebbin's shared vision for their company revolves around “recognizing that details matter,” as well as integrity, reliability, respect for others, and commitment to excellence.