Dvele welcomes veteran architect, Stace McGee to the team

“I have been looking for what’s next in my life for over 6 years. But I’m glad I waited to make the shift,” says Stace McGee. And Dvele couldn’t be happier to welcome the 30-year veteran architect to the team.

Stace founded the first local branches of the U.S. Green Building Council – the organization behind LEED certifications; sustainable building practices – in New Mexico and Palm Beach, Florida. He has worked tirelessly to advance environmentally-friendly building practices into the built environment (residential and commercial real estate). Yet, he feels there’s more to be done.

“I’m tired of practicing architecture because I feel as though all the hard work designing and building off-the-grid homes, sustainable developments, education around sustainability and regenerative ideas, green building codes, and institutional incentive creation have not made enough real impact on our housing and climate crisis.” Stace goes on to explain.

When we met Stace, Dvele was already planning to expand manufacturing capabilities to another state. Instead of acting quickly, like Stace had become accustomed to, he decided to meet the rest of Dvele’s team before making a permanent leap to an organization that was entirely in line with his values and beliefs. For over a year, Dvele and Stace learned about each other’s dedication to sustainability, building wealth for everyday people, and changing how homes are produced.

Stace goes on to say, “I’ve moved slowly (not easy for me) to understand this opportunity. I wanted to allow myself time to understand and formulate ideas from both sides of my brain. I’m very visual and have spent a lifetime imagining what could be. So I wanted the left side of my brain to come into play more – the side based more on logic.”

Making this decision doesn’t come lightly for someone who has spent most of their life running their own businesses and making decisions on the fly. Coming together with Dvele, Stace will help our team focus on the right type of development projects that can ease the housing crisis while simultaneously protecting the environment from more harm. Dvele’s team gets to lean on Stace for his decades of real-world experience, and Stace will finally have the instrument to create the meaningful change he’s been looking for.

I believe Dvele’s approach to housing is one of the best solutions to our current housing/climate crisis I’ve seen. I want to disrupt the current status quo, and I believe Dvele is well placed to do so. -Stace McGee, VP of Development

Architecture, development, and construction, has all Stace has ever known. He grew up around it. Since childhood, he would be with his father as he drove up a driveway to see a house design (not knowing the people at all) just because he had to see what they were building. At regular family meals, he remembers his uncles talking about 10,000-acre development projects, real estate trends, the market, and risks. So it’s easy to say that Stace has been steeped in real estate his entire life. 

Yet, he clearly remembers throughout all of these childhood conversations, never hearing about the environment, the climate, or sustainability. It nagged him. He wanted to listen to how all of these developments were making a difference, how they were pushing technology forward while being a steward for the planet. But it never happened.

As he grew up working with his father and uncles, he always kept the environment in mind. And when he learned enough from his family, he parted ways with them to start his own firm based on making sustainable design viable for all who live in a home.

Dvele firmly believes Stace has the skills and general disposition to think creatively about how to move the company forward into the developer marketplace. He has spent decades working with small and medium developers and large builder-developers and creating his own small development projects. He understands how developers think with the added benefit of understanding the obstacles to produce equitable, sustainable developments.

“I think Dvele solves a lot of developers' pain points. The home reduces many of the risks involved in developing real estate and, therefore, the stress of developing. This coincided with the current environmental crisis coupled with the massive incentive initiative rolling out seems to be the perfect storm to disrupt the status quo of the residential marketplace.” And we couldn’t agree more.

If you or anyone you know has land to develop, Dvele is ready to discuss those projects. We’re looking for land owners, developers, and institutions that care about equitable housing, who want to build sustainably, and are ready to push the industry forward with homes that are Self-Powered™ and keep people healthy.