From camps to mansions | Residential builder Gary Crowell watches the western Maine market move toward luxury

Gary Crowell has the keys to most of the houses he's built. He knows the alarm codes by heart. He enters the houses through the garages and back doors, and in the winter arranges plywood to protect precarious windows so they won't be damaged by the weather. The owners of Crowell's homes, like many of the people building in the Kezar Lake area of western Maine, are self-employed entrepreneurs living outside Maine full time. In their absence, Crowell cares for their homes not because he is hired to, according to his clients, but because he loves his creations.

Crowell's firm, Crowell Construction, is one of more than 200 small-scale residential contractors across the state, according to Rich Cromwell, vice president of the Homebuilders and Remodelers Association of Maine. These firms typically don't build large subdivisions, or even small ones, instead building homes and additions one by one in a relatively compact geographical area. They tend not to advertise, instead attracting new clients by word of mouth and retaining previous clients with the quality of their work. All of which is true for Gary Crowell ˆ— except that one of his long-time clients is perhaps the most famous man in Maine: Stephen King, who recently tapped Crowell to oversee the massive renovation of the historic house next to King's Bangor home (see "Little shop of horrors," p. 27).

The $1 million-plus project is a far cry from Crowell's modest beginnings building small camps and additions in the Lovell-Stoneham area nearly 30 years ago. Over the years, as the economy of the region has changed, so have Crowell's houses. The first homes he built averaged about 2,000 sq. ft. each, but by the late 1980s, as land values increased and buyers became more affluent, the homes grew significantly larger. "The average person couldn't afford to buy a half-a-million-dollar raw lot on the lake," he says, "and when that happened, I saw these much more extraordinary ˆ— large ˆ— homes going up."

A multi-level home he built in 1994 sits more than 100 feet back from Kezar Lake. The 4,200-square-foot, custom-built house cost $400,000 to build, excluding the cost of the land. Today, Crowell says, the house would cost double. And it would be larger; Crowell says the homes he builds these days average 4,500 sq. ft. or more.

According to Ed Nista, a carpenter alongside Crowell in the late 1970s and now a real estate broker for New Suncook Realty in Lovell, home prices in Lovell have risen 15% in each of the last five years. In the late 70s, a person could buy a reasonably good-sized lot for $25,000-$35,000. "Now," Crowell says, "you'd be hard-pressed to find something you can build on for less than three-quarters of a million."

What's drawing these affluent buyers, says Crowell, is Kezar Lake, which lies largely within the Lovell town line. The lake, hugged by woodland and caught between the spilling foothills of the White Mountains, was a sportsman's paradise, drawing game hunters and fishermen from the turn of the century until about 20 years ago. The residential building around the lake has eliminated a lot of the natural woodland, and the population increase deters hunters and fishermen. But the lake is still beautiful and peaceful, according to local residents, and it's an easy two-hour drive from Boston. As a result, Kezar Lake has become a destination spot for city dwellers on vacation.

The neighboring towns of Stoneham and Lovell have, for the most part, benefited from this affluence, Crowell says. "People come up, they spend money going out to eat, ski areas have done well," Crowell says. According to tax records at Lovell Town Hall, the town's total assessed value nearly doubled to $404 million during a reassessment last year. But with the increase in property values also comes an increase in taxes on lakefront property, according to Nista, who has spent 19 years on Lovell's budget committee. And, Crowell says, people who have had land in the family for more than 50 years own many of the properties around Kezar Lake. To keep up with the tax increase, he says, many have had to portion off their land for sale in smaller lots.

And more lots mean more luxury homebuyers. "Civilization's ugly head rising up on you," Crowell says of the phenomenon. But more buyers mean more business for Crowell. There used to be fewer homes around the lake, he says, but "now you see a lot more."

The personal connection
A native of Saugus, Mass., Crowell, now 49, followed in the footsteps of his father, a carpenter who moved the family to Maine in the late 70s. Crowell spent three years driving back and forth to Boston every day to do cabinetry and trim work as an apprentice. Wages in the Boston area were twice those of Maine at the time, but the commute was draining.

After his third of four years as an apprentice, Crowell decided to finish up in Maine ˆ— sacrificing nearly half his wages ˆ— in pursuit of a more self-sufficient lifestyle.

As a carpenter, Crowell says, he is accustomed to working on a job from start to finish. When he first started building in Maine, he and his crew did everything from framing to carpet. "You couldn't hire anyone to Sheetrock," he says. "There were plumbers and electricians, but you'd be hard set to find someone to build cabinets for you. You had to do it yourself."

Now, most builders hire subcontractors to do specialized work such as drywall, heating and cooling, roofing and trim. In the last decade, Crowell says the biggest change in his business is that he spends more time on business management than he does swinging his hammer. But "we still try to do most things," he says. Compared to other builders in the area, he says he subcontracts far less, something he says provides his customers with a unified, well-rounded team.

Crowell's team is made up of an accountant and a crew of six men. His foreman has been with him since 1982, and the last time he hired a skilled framer and finisher was 1998. He pays them about $20-$25 an hour, nearly 33% more than the Oxford County average, according to the Maine Department of Labor. Offering a lower hourly labor charge is one way he says he can outbid his competitors.

Another way he wins bids, he says, is by knowing the work and the products needed to do the job well. According to Nista, customers come to Crowell because they like him. In the 28 years he's been building in Maine, he has never done any marketing. He says his investment in his business has required time more than anything else, and his customers come by word-of-mouth. "A lot of times it's just the homeowner who calls you up out of the blue, gets your name from a Realtor ˆ— even Center Market [in Center Lovell] ˆ— looking for a carpenter," he says. "'Oh yeah, I know a guyˆ…'"

Other times upscale, custom homes in the area come up for a bid. Crowell says he competes with two or three local companies that are set up to build high-end, custom homes, and the difference in their bids can range about $30,000. "It's more important that the owner and architect feel they can work with the builder, and that they feel comfortable with him, than who's cheaper of the three," Crowell says.

Joyce Buckingham, a Connecticut resident who hired Crowell in the mid-90s to build an expanded cape in Lovell, on the eastern bank of Kezar Lake, agrees about the importance of a connection between buyer and builder, saying of Crowell, "He understood what we wanted and he loved what we wanted." She and her husband chose Crowell from a list of five or six builders because they liked him. "We spent hours with him," Buckingham says. "He got to know me and my husband and all of our kidsˆ… Our personalities were the key to the success of the whole venture."

A builder, not an architect
Back in the home he built on Kezar Lake in 1994, Crowell steps down stairs he laid and into a bright living area. He looks up at the ceiling beams, down the stone and mortar chimney and then gazes out over the balcony onto the lake. Designed by an architect from the Hudson Valley region, this airy and spacious cliff dwelling uses the hillside as if it came already attached. "It's a gift this fellow had," Crowell says of the architect. "Every time we stepped down, there was the ground again."

Crowell says he has found himself caught in the catch-22 of being a builder who is also a conservationist. "It's hard for a carpenter to be a tree-hugger, but I'm close," he says. Often his customers want to build their homes as close to the water as possible, cut limbs from trees and clear the way for a big, bold view. "But now when you drive down to the lake," he says, "everyone's looking at you and your house instead of the natural environment that was here before you built it."

If everyone built their houses as close to the shore as the law allows, he tells his customers, everyone would be looking at everyone else's houses, not the shoreline or the woods. "And you wouldn't want to be here." His argument, he says, challenges his customers' integrity. He smiles. "Sometimes I win. Sometimes I lose. It's 50-50." But building back from the water is more than just a strategy for conservation; it's a strategy for future business ˆ— if the views are preserved, that means more potential customers down the line.

Each home he builds is different and presents different challenges, he says. He likes it this way, and so do his customers. "I'd hate to be a builder that just builds condominiums, spec houses all the same," he says. "The work would get kind of boring after a while."

Crowell's largest, most expensive home yet was finished in 2001, after a year of work, and rang in at $1.2 million. Designed by an architect from Boston and indicative of trends in the Maine luxury home market, it's one of the most artfully crafted homes Crowell says he's built. The powder room sink is a half-boulder, the centrally located fireplace is made of cut-stone (laid by Wayne Libbey of Stow) and in the master bathroom, each square of tile is surrounded by a pattern of smaller tiles all cut individually from the same stone. "I love new ideas and this house was full of them," Crowell says. While he designs most of the homes he builds, this house defined for Crowell the differences between an architect and a builder. "I would never come up with this because I would say to myself, 'That's just too much work,'" he says. "An architect doesn't deal with the reality of it. He deals with the artistic form of it all."

Evident in his most recent project, however, is how Crowell has learned to make artful also practical. Across the lake, tucked back far more than the legal 100 feet from the shore and surrounded by woods is the house Crowell calls his favorite. He designed the $900,000 home for a local couple and finished it last spring. Standing in the knee-deep snow, Crowell proudly points out the screened porch off the dining room, a covered balustrade off the master bedroom and custom woodwork throughout. Instead of building 12-foot ceilings with wasted space up top where heat collects, he used the space to build other rooms. "They said, 'Make us something special.'" He smiles. "I like the colors we chose, too."