"Buyers wanting to upgrade to a new home but who are concerned about the subsequent tax increase should consider renovating existing homes. These buyers can reduce their environmental footprint and gain substantial long-term tax savings. Sarasota is ripe with renovation opportunities.”

-Grant Castilow

Island Sanctuary

SRQ Magazine | November 2010

On the motor ship “Saylor”—named after his seven-year-old daughter—Steve Ellis crosses Sarasota Bay toward Longboat Pass every weekend en route to Eden. His utopia: a newly-built vacation home on Jewfish Key with the greenest modern amenities and a veritable treasure trove of nautical décor. Reminiscent of a coastal New England retreat, it is like a harbored yacht that has been anchored into the Florida earth.

Only a brief water ride from Mar Vista Dockside Restaurant on Longboat Key, this isle is where Ellis, his wife Catherine and their daughter Saylor revel and refresh. “What is so cool about building a vacation house is you can take risks that you might not take with your regular home,” says Ellis, the CEO of the Sarasota design-build firm MyGreenBuildings, who finished constructing the eco-friendly house in mid-summer, seven years after purchasing the plot.

From Ellis’ transaction in 2003 until a few months ago, the 1.5-acre of land sat virtually undisturbed—a wilderness of canopy-like trees and native groundcover. The Ellises would depart from their primary residence on Siesta Key to snuggle up in their boat by lantern light and stargaze. It wasn’t until this year that Ellis unraveled his blueprints and began hauling building materials by barge to the secluded address.

Green Light
Jewfish Key is a pristine swatch of Southwest Florida, nestled in Sarasota Bay in the town of Longboat Key. Its geography is obscure, its human residents are few, and it is only accessibly by boat. Those that own real estate on the Key, which is also known as La Lenaire Isle, are typically not full-time residents. Only during special getaways do they intermingle with the flora and fauna on the lush, private, 38-acre island. This sparse population keeps the land unspoiled, and Ellis intends to keep it that way.

Creating a structure that would work in concert with the landscape, the seascape and the seasons was Ellis’ main aim. His green-mindedness is as integral to his award-winning business as it is to his personal lifestyle.

Ellis often speaks publicly about sustainable construction and is an accredited professional through the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification system. It was only natural that his vision for the Jewfish Key property would be socially responsible and capitalize on the isle’s indigenous gems.

When Jewfish Key was first developed, Ellis says, the entire east side of the island was set aside as a preserve and the remainder was segmented into 13 buildable lots of uniform size. When Ellis snagged the parcel—which, he says, was quite a steal at the time—the Key was rather unknown, and thus, not in high demand.

The island is still fairly under the radar and, understandably, unmanageable for people that work 9-to-5 jobs and require landside bases. It’s not simple to build on the Key either. The undertaking requires a green thumb—to say the least—and the patience to haul every accessory and structural element across water. “Everything that came here came by barge—from the trees we planted to create a hammock around the house to all the materials,” Ellis says. “One thing we did was make sure we could enhance what was here to provide shade and cool the house passively. We put a lot of thought into everything we brought.”

Ship on Dry Land
Fortunately, Ellis had seven years to work and decades of career know-how to help him complete the task. His deliberation is evident in the cherry-picked items adorning the home. It is as if every detail—from the yellow stained glass hanging lantern that greets incomers at the front door, to the salvaged wood from an Ybor City tobacco factory on a guest room’s bed frame—was placed with heartfelt meticulousness. “There are a lot of really unique things we’ve used,” Ellis says. “We repurposed stuff like sails—like one we got off of a schooner that’s been around the world three or four times—and turned them into shower curtains and panels for closet doors.”

The base of the home is propped up on stilts—a foundation of 22 piles dug 20 feet into the ground, with beams sitting atop. For the exterior, Ellis chose Hardie board, which is an impervious concrete product that, once painted, is nearly identical to wood. A stairwell ascends from the lawn to the home’s first level, and guests are treated to an architectural mix of waterfront Key West meets seaside Maine.

Salvaged heart pine floors sheath the long, narrow living room that is sparkling white with navy blue accents. To the left (port side), a wooden deck the length of the living space looks out onto the Pass. To the right (starboard), a sister deck peers out onto the dense preserve. “You’ve got the water on one side and the woods on the other side,” Ellis says. “Everywhere you are, you’re open to the air and the view.”

Deceptively, the home only contains 1,860 air-conditioned square feet, though the entire living space is about 3,000. The double decks alone are 33 feet long and 12 feet wide. Ellis opted for sliding glass doors flanking the living room to “blur the line between inside and out,” he says.

Every inch of the structure is tightly sealed with soy foam insulation, which allows Ellis to completely close off the bedrooms while opening the doors of the main house. A bedroom can remain at 80 degrees with its own cooled air supply, even when the glass doors on either side of the living room are propped open and the breeze is whipping from the beach to the backyard. To maximize the views, Ellis used a product called BetterVue, which is a sheet of nearly invisible screening with tiny holes.

One of the two bedrooms on the first level has its own private deck with a running hot and cold water connection (Ellis plans to place a bathtub there instead of a standard Jacuzzi). The room boasts a centerpiece of a bed, with a 300-year-old cypress headboard milled out of a beam from the historic John Ringling Hotel. The bathroom is decorated with old school white subway tile with light grey grout, shining Kohler faucets and fixtures, Restoration Hardware knobs and Carrera white and grey marble countertops (like the cold slabs found in fudge shops).

The living room chairs were scrapped from a local restaurant that went out of business. The couches are all-weather teak, and the dining room table is fashioned out of heavy, reclaimed cedar barn wood. Next to this massive antique table are the kitchen counters with brand new chrome and brushed nickel fixtures, a Sub-Zero fridge and Wolf appliances. The home’s walls are made with recycled, moisture-and-mold-resistant gypsum board, while the ceilings are clad in a tongue-in-groove pine painted with a glossy white lacquer. In total, there are four bedrooms, two bonus rooms, four bathrooms, an outdoor shower and three private decks.

An antique figurehead of a raven-haired woman—which once graced an old ship and is now cracking at the seams—is mounted to the wall on the portside deck, looking out onto the Pass and keeping symbolic watch over the house. “My dad and I sailed the coast of Maine when I was younger,” Ellis says. “Sailing is a huge part of my life, so I tried to bring that into this house.”

A Family Hideaway
During Fourth of July weekend, the Ellis family played host to 14 guests, and everyone had a place to sleep. “We designed the house for lots of friends, parties and kids,” Ellis says. “It’s about just getting away and getting closer to your family as opposed to being scattered in a huge house.”

Leading up to the second level—the guesthouse, as Ellis sees it—is an outside wooden staircase. The upper level has unique angled ceilings and two eves that have been converted into bedrooms and/or play rooms. Eco-conscious memory foam mattresses from Sarasota Collection fill the bed frames, and antique sconces from estate and yard sales illuminate the sleeping areas. The drastic roof slope creates a cozy ambiance, like a tucked-away nook under the stairs or a child’s tree house. “We have a lot of friends with kids, so two families of five or more can take over one of each of the two upstairs bedroom suites,” Ellis says.

A reflective metal roof diverts the summer heat in the daytime, and at night, coconut palms, Chinese fan palms, Australian pines (brought over by John Ringling in the early 20th century) and native cabbage palms sway and creek with the wind. Sharing the land with the Ellis family are ospreys, screech owls, great horned owls, pileated woodpeckers and a variety of seabirds and shorebirds.

“In a summer place, you can open up the house and feel the cross-breeze. You can listen to the birds,” Ellis says, puffing on a cigar and standing on the portside deck.

He points to a brown and white osprey that is perched on an Australian pine tree branch. It is scanning the depths of the water for prey. Tipping his sunglasses down, Ellis marvels, “Isn’t it beautiful?”

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