NEW PORT RICHEY - When developer Frank Starkey designed a first home for himself, he hoped to inspire neighbors - even builders - with a few ideas: tin roof, intimate courtyard, oversized gas lanterns flanking the front doors, bamboo-wood stairs, concrete floors stained the color of earth.
The architecture is all-the-rage Anglo-Caribbean; the interior, barefoot-sophisticated.
And the best part is looking out the windows.
"From every window there's a good view," he says, pointing to the cypress swamp in one direction, a small pond in another, a serene courtyard with its own panorama of Florida sky.
Starkey's two-story house is nestled on a trapezoid-shaped lot in his New Urbanism development, Longleaf, a half-hour drive from the click-click synergy of South Tampa, where he lived for years.
"Honestly, it's hard to be away from the social life, but I had to move to be able to do a neat house," he says. "I'm also a lot closer to work here."
Starkey, the son of rancher Jay B Starkey Jr., grew up down the road on the 16,000-acre ranch at the headwaters of the Anclote and Pithlachascotee rivers. He began developing Longleaf in the late 1990s with his brother Trey.
He moved into the 2,000-square-foot house in December, filling the space with his collection of artwork and family heirlooms.
The artistic offerings bloom from family tradition: a coffee table his father made from the planks of cypress at the bottom of a water tank once on the family's Ulmerton Ranch in Largo, needlepoint samplers sewn by his mother and grandmother, a metal yard sculpture made by Trey.
"Every Christmas instead of giving each other gifts," he explains, "we each draw a name. The rule is that you have to make the gift yourself."
On the stereo, he plays a mellow compilation of favorite downloaded CDs he calls Morning Coffee. He made the collection for one of the neighborhood's weekly coffee klatches, a tradition in Longleaf. Residents in this neighborhood thick with front porches, pleasing architecture and picket fences take turns hosting the social hours. It's a way for people to show off their houses while getting to know one another.
About 100 people showed up when Starkey hosted a few weeks ago.
The first thing everyone asks about, he says, are the floors: gorgeous, stained concrete, 24-inch squares of burnished gold and black formed into a Harlequin pattern, giving it the look of tile.
"The stain is sprayed on, and the acid actually etches the concrete," he explains.
The original ideas didn't stop there: He made liberal use of columns and molding as architectural accents.
"There are a lot of formal elements and spaces to this house, some very symmetrical ideas. Formal isn't a dirty word in my vocabulary," Starkey explains. "Overall, though, my goal was to have an informal feel to the flow."
In the separate dining room, formal and informal elements mix with ease. Claret- and grape-colored velvet drapes brush the floor like the hems of ball gowns. Starkey made the dining table himself from welded steel and glass. The formal, brocade covered chairs are a mixture of two styles.
On the wall, high-tech, wall-mounted lamps illuminate a contemporary sculpture of nine powder-coated steel squares made by a Colorado artist.
The den, his favorite room and the first one guests walk into, blends high-tech audio and video equipment with warm leather, woodsy floral upholstered chairs and a natural basket-weave ottoman. On the walls, a wooden tray from Appalachia where dough would rise, fabric printing blocks from India, the site-plan of an archaeological dig he worked on while in Rome as a college student.
In the corner, a sculptural piece of cypress limb plucked from the river at the family ranch.
He covered the bedroom floors in wall-to-wall mountain-grass carpet from China that he bought from a company called Eco Smart in Sarasota.
"It's a renewable resource, and it's a much warmer color than sea grass," he says.
Starkey works from the old family ranch home on State Road 54 that he redesigned and converted to offices. At 35, he is openly and comfortably gay. His partner is a commercial airline pilot based in Washington, D.C.
Starkey holds a six-year professional degree in architecture from Rice University and is the "town architect" for Longleaf. The Town Hall and preschool are his designs, as is his house. He stresses that he's not licensed as an architect, but was educated as one. After college, he joined I.M. Pei's firm, working on projects that included the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, D.C., and the San Francisco Public Library, made famous in the movie City of Angels.
He designs buildings and plans communities.
A fitting job description for the great-grandson of William Straub, an early editor and publisher of the St. Petersburg Times who led the crusade to preserve St. Petersburg's picturesque downtown waterfront.
"My grandfather, Jay B Starkey Sr., had a strong ethic of environmental preservation - he wanted to preserve a piece of pristine Florida wilderness for generations," he says.
About 13,000 acres of the family's Pasco ranch have been preserved and include the Starkey Wilderness Park off Little Road in New Port Richey.
He remembers growing up on the ranch and envying his classmates who lived in subdivisions and "always had someone to play with."
He also noticed new bus stops cropping up every year as new subdivisions sprouted along State Road 54.
"Trey and I grew up with a daily interaction with nature, but growth has been happening our whole lives out here," he says.
He and his family became intrigued with the idea of New Urbanism "because it creates a civic realm, but at the same time preserves a lot of the natural environment," he says.
The requisite closeness and density of such a community, he says, allows for "huge areas of land to be untouched in a wilderness preserve rather than developed."
Plus, he admits that although he loves living in a rural environment, "I'm fascinated with the idea of having neighbors."
- My House is a feature about the people behind Pasco's housing boom. Elizabeth Bettendorf can be reached at ebettendorf@hotmail.com
