College Street Studios

Do not hire this man!!!! He does not know what he is doing. He had to redo the plans several times, he does not return phone calls, does not show up for appointments. We are left with addition plans that we can not use. The city will not give us a permit because he did not do the plans correctly. He refuses to return the money we paid him.

Avoid at all costs! Mike Yates (owner, proprietor and sole employee of College Street Studios) was nearly impossible to work with, and in the end, kept our money and did not provide a completed set of plans per our contract. We hired him to design architectural drawings for a new home build. Our builder had worked with him before on a smaller addition, so we went with the builder's recommendation. We begun our project from out of state prior to moving to Ohio, so we spoke on the phone, sent a "must have" list, a "would be nice to have" list as well as desired first floor layout and inspiration photos of the exterior styles we liked via email. He agreed that he could work with that and would put a design together and incorporate those components. Right off the bat, it seemed like we were always getting excuses and delays. We are patient and understanding people, so when Mike claimed delays due to illness, we completely understood. We also thought perhaps the fact that we had only spoken on the phone and exchanged email was the cause of confusion/delay. He communicated poorly and then one day he just sent the first design to us, which was a nearly finished set of plans including framing, power and light fixture schedules, etc. - without us ever settling on a layout/exterior we liked. Unfortunately, he had done a lot of work without ever really communicating with us or checking in to see if he was headed in the right direction. Our builder was appalled at the design and aside from the fact that several pieces of the design were "odd" - our builder said "it's just plain ugly" (which we agreed). We kindly expressed what we thought needed to change and again sent photos of the desired exterior so he could edit the plan. He requested additional money since he had to re-work so much. The contract stated 50% down, which we had already paid and 50% at completion, so the request for money mid-project made us uncomfortable. Honestly, he should not have done so much work without checking in to ensure we were happy with the layout. Yet we could acknowledge the amount of work he had already done, so we obliged and paid his request. When we got to Ohio and had a meeting in person, we were hopeful that the project would take off. But then came the endless promises with no results. He would continually say he would have something ready "in a couple days" and it would be 2 weeks before we'd hear from him and even then it was because we were the ones who had reached out to him. Our builder wanted to get started submitting plans for permit, and we expressed the urgency to Mike, but he kept giving excuses and was unable to complete the design vision we had discussed together. We are unable to reach him. He stopped responding to email and his voicemail is full. We never received completed plans. We attempted to request the money back via Venmo, but the request was immediately rejected (proof that he was still alive and able to receive correspondence!) We have come to terms with the fact that we will never see that money, but would like to save any other folks the distress of working with Mike Yates and/or College Street Studios!