Jonathan Tate
Principal, OJT
In a city that struggles with a lack of affordable housing, local architectural and urban design firm, the Office of Jonathan Tate (OJT), has stepped beyond its typical role to offer up something completely new.
Together with developer Chuck Rutledge and contractor Pierre Stouse, Jonathan Tate finished construction this past winter on 12 homes in the Irish Channel priced starting at $288,000 — less than half the average home cost in this high-demand historic neighborhood.
The project is called St. Thomas/Ninth and it’s the result of an innovative approach that utilizes out-of-the-box thinking on land purchasing mixed with contemporary design strategies to create more attainably priced homes.
After success building on small lots that Tate describes as less like your typical home plot and more “like someone’s yard,” a plot of land was identified near Tchoupitoulas Street, one block from the Mississippi River, that encompassed vacant land and half an existing warehouse.
On that 12,800 square feet, OJT designed 10 single-family homes and one two-family home with the idea of building up, not out. Homes range from two to three stories and 919 square feet to up to 1,561 square feet with two or three bedrooms.
“We’ve invested in quality materials, like lifetime warrantied high-impact windows and a metal skin that comes with a 20-year-warranty,” Tate says, explaining that the idea is to make not just homebuying easier on first-time buyers, but home owning as well.
The project has so far gained favor with the Louisiana Landmarks Society, who honored it with a 2018 award for Excellence in Historic Preservation for New Construction/Design, as well as with homebuyers — half the homes have already sold.
“I think we’ve exercised the ideas we were trying to exercise,” says Tate, who is now working on a project with a nonprofit homeownership organization, along with one in Louisville, Kentucky. “We definitely had no desire to be developers, but we needed to be for this.”
