Custom homes made with care
The veteran builder behind Curtis Graf Homes reflects on five decades in the area
Winter/Spring 24-25
Written By: Steve Phillips | Images: Courtesy and Gillian Hunter
Longtime Park City resident and custom-home builder Curt Graf has witnessed the quaint ex-mining-town-turned-ski-resort he moved to decades ago transform into a world-class destination ski resort and a thriving mecca for outdoor lovers and the affluent.
Curt, owner of Curtis Graf Homes, blew into town from New Jersey as a wide-eyed teenager eager to ski the hill his dad had visited and told him about. It was the winter of 1973 and he was only here for a couple of months, but the nascent ski bum funded his ski habit by “flippin’ burgers” at the iconic Summit House atop Park City Mountain Resort.
Back home after his first visit, Curt’s Park City story was interrupted. He and his older brother, Bob, decided to go for a bike ride, a very long bike ride. Curt withdrew his college savings, flew to Paris with Bob and began their “round-the- world” bike trip.
After riding across several continents, the boys wintered in Queensland, New Zealand, where they saw a poster that read: “learn how to teach skiing.” They took it as an omen, signed up and completed the class.
Back in the states, the newly minted ski instructor made a beeline for Park City, applied for a job at the Park City Ski School and got it. Life was good in Park City in the mid-1970s, but Curt soon ran into a problem: How could he make a living when he wasn’t teaching skiing?
Thus began his circuitous journey to becoming a custom home builder.
“It really wasn’t a childhood dream, nothing so dramatic as that. At first, I just needed summer work to support my skiing habit,” he admits. He took a lot of part-time, construction- related jobs in the late 1970s and early ’80s, then ran a siding company up to 1992. These wide-ranging jobs were all leading him in the right direction — even if he didn’t know it yet.
It was like the Wild West throughout the ’70s and ’80s, Curt recalls. “The building departments weren’t very strict at the time so there was a lot of questionable stuff built. Things started to change about the time I got into the business. More money came into the town and people didn’t just want basic housing anymore, they wanted something pretty nice.”
After working for many Park City general contractors, Curt took the plunge in 1992 — in more ways than one. That year, he got his general contractor license and married his wife, Julie. The couple built a home in Jeremy Ranch, had two kids and settled in to raise their family.
And when Julie got her real estate license, the couple had a strategy: He would build the houses and Julie would list and sell them.
To showcase his work, Curt built his first “spec” house in Highland Estates. A second was completed and both sold quickly. Many other homes followed.
Curt has always focused on building moderately priced homes (by Park City standards). “It was never my goal to build big fancy homes for well-heeled refugees from California. I like to think of homes traditionally, not as vacation places, but places you can live in and raise a family. I build homes that I would want to live in, and I have always placed function over form. You start with a good floor plan and go from there. Without that, everything else is just ‘lipstick on a pig,’” he says, grinning.
Today, having built many homes in the area, Curt is contemplating retirement. He describes his journey like this: “I never wanted to be a big, high-volume builder. I like building and prefer building one home at a time so I always know what is happening on my jobs. I probably could have made a lot more money, but I did it my way and I’m proud of the homes I’ve built.”
Curt is in the final stages of a custom home build at the time of writing and hints that he may not be done yet. “You never know, someone might make me an offer I can’t refuse,” he says.
“Park City is certainly not the town I moved to 50 years ago,” he reflects. “But I’ve met a tremendous number of really good people and have a lot of great friends here. So I don’t envision myself leaving anytime soon.”
Looking to the future, Curt sees green pastures for the building community. “There is tremendous demand for housing of all sorts and fortunately there are a lot of really good builders in town. I don’t know If we’ll get another building bump from the announcement of the 2034 Winter Olympics because we’ve already been bumped, but you never know.”
