There is a nice article in the September-October 2011 issue of Midwest Home Magazine about one of our projects.  We were fortunate enough to be able to remodel the home in 1998 and then finish the lower level in 2009.  The full article by Bette Hammel can be read on the Midwest Home website by clicking this link. or you can read it by scrolling down.

Don Shelby’s Sustainable Home

Landschute’s project-in-process, the design of Don Shelby’s new Excelsior home, has been the talk of the town. In aiming to meet LEED Platinum and Minnesota GreenStar Gold certificates, the home showcases our sustainable practices.  More information on the project is described in the August 2011 issue of Lake Minnetonka.  Feel free to read about it in the online article as well!

Click here to access the online article

Recently we had the pleasure of giving a tour of the Don Shelby home that we’ve been working on to some up and coming high school reporters. That tour and the interviews that went along with it make up a small part of the excellent article written by David Gustafson that can be found in the July 5th, 2011 Twin Cities | Region section of the StarTribune.  An excerpt of the article is below.

Low-impact homes not just for high-profile people

Article by: DAVID GUSTAFSON , Eden Prairie High School

“Shelby’s builder, Landschute of Excelsior, will put up a house that is almost twice as energy efficient as the typical code standard for a green home.

Shelby said he will spend close to $1 million to bring this relatively modest house to the environmental gold standard. But homeowners don’t have to start from scratch to effect energy efficiencies and savings. Joe Paetzel, from Landschute, suggests these steps:

• Add more insulation in attics and between walls.

• Supplement the home’s electrical requirements with photo voltaic (solar) panels.

• Replace regular light bulbs with LED bulbs.”

For the full article, please click here to head over to the StarTribune.

We were recently highlighted in the May 2011 Issue of Lake Minnetonka Magazine.

Historic Deephaven Home Restored

BY: ALEX DAVY
PHOTOS BY: KAREN MELVIN

The Deephaven home of Jon and Mary Monson stuns with its simple, classic elegance.

How do you transform a house but preserve it at the same time? How do you take an old-fashioned, endlessly subdivided space and turn it into something sweeping, open and modern, all without compromising its essential character? Just ask architecture-slash-design team of Jon and Mary Monson. Their radically redesigned Deephaven lake home looks better than good—it looks like it belongs.

“We wanted to be faithful to what it was, yet at the same time rework it so we could live here the way we wanted to live,” Jon Monson says. He stands in his wife’s sun-drenched office. The room, with its high ceiling and tall, slender windows, is suffused with a clear, pale light. The family dog, Ivy, a 9-year-old Bichon Frise, is curled up on a cozy-looking armchair, caught by a sunbeam, her white fur aglow.                                                                                                               Click here for more images

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In the September 2010 issue, Minnesota Business published an article on Bruce Lambrecht in which he talks about his and Jon Monson’s involvement in the “Twinsville” development. Here’s an excerpt from the article by Steve Schussler.

SS: What was your vision when buying the land? Was it always to build a stadium there?
BL: No. The original assembly of land was done by Jon Monson, another general partner, who did a great job of identifying vacant and underutilized buildings and vacant parcels; and over several years we successfully assembled the land. Jon’s vision was that the city-core would ultimately move in our direction. Then, in 1999, my vision was to build a compact, urban, transit oriented ballpark, as part of a neighborhood development dubbed “Twinsville.” I took Rich Pogin to the site and pitched him my idea. He hesitated at first, but the next day agreed to a very small budget for drawings. The concept of using land that already had the majority of the infrastructure in place, (i.e., parking lots, roads, bridges, current and future transit and bike trails), and the spectacular views of the downtown skyline seemed to make sense and made for an exciting vision to share.

For the full article, please click here to head ever to Minnesota Business.