If I can prevent one person from making the same mistake as I did in hiring Paul Tangora as an architect for your project, I will have succeeded. Paul owns Marquette Design Group. I wanted to hire someone who was familiar with the area, this often helps with building codes and permitting. I met with Paul in June of 2021 to begin the design process. He met me out at my building site and took some pictures. I gave him a detailed list of must haves and gave him some sketches of what I had in mind. I am designing my permanent residence and mind you, it is only 1500 sqft. He promised that he would take everything into consideration and assured me he would be around through the build process to prevent any issues of design vs build with the builder I choose. The first round of design went ok. Some of the requests I made did not make it into his design. I requested that the garage be connected to the house. In the first round there was no garage design at all. He then designed the garage separate and not connected. I made the mistake of paying him the second half of his fee at this time. There still was no site plan at this time because of some miscommunication between the surveyor and him at this time. Everything went downhill from here. I know that changes take time and time is money. I offered to pay more money than the agreed upon sum to compensate for this. We came to a mutually agreed upon sum. Now he refuses to make any changes and Paul got pretty nasty. Here are some quotes from the e-mailed responses I got from him: "[my name]....You have got to stop making changes. Last summer when we were designing the house, was the time for changes. And its (sic) not a question of money. It has to do with time...my time...the time I have committed to other clients months ago. I can't keep coming back and taking time away from my other projects. I don't want to sound curse (sic), but I can't commit to anymore changes. I don't have the time." "This would have met ALL!!! of my OBLIGATIONS!!!....before you started making changes" Paul failed to realize that, I too, am a paying customer. I found many of his correspondence unprofessional and downright rude. Do I want my house to be designed correctly? Absolutely. Was I willing to pay more? Absolutely. Paul has now gone completely dark and refuses to answer any e-mails or phone calls. I must now hire another architect to complete what I paid him to do. My family has built several custom homes over the years. I have also been responsible for the design and build of several multimillion dollar R&D facilities in my professional career. I have not seen anything like this before. Beware and avoid. read more

Look elsewhere -especially if you are doing a kitchen remodel- unless you are willing to accept a first design from someone who clearly doesn't spend much time in that part of a house. read more