BILLINGS - Future Habitat for Humanity homeowners will have the unique opportunity to choose their house from three different designs. The designs are from local architects as part of a recent competition. In the Spirit of Montana, local organizations prove combining forces to help the community has proven successful.

"We were thrilled with the idea of the partnership not only does it inspire our program with new ideas," said Kathleen O’Neal, Executive Director of Habitat for Humanity.

"Creating public awareness of good design and what architects can do for the community was really important to us," said Shannon Peterson from the Billings Architectural Association.

Architects competed for the top design and the top three said they knew their designs were superior.

"We kind of joked that we had an inside track because we've done so many habitat plans," said first place Jason Fitzgerald and Jeff Kanning.

"I believed I had a chance I had spent a lot of time over the month of September working on this," said Joel Anderson, honorable mention.

One architect says although he didn't take first his design is a still winner.

"I’ll be able to build this one in round up for a client," says Brian M. Johnson, honorable mention.

But all this success wasn't really expected.

"We didn't require pre-registration for the entries so we didn't really know how many we were going to get so when we got twelve we were ecstatic," said Peterson.

"Absolutely a success, we had no idea how many entries there would be and we were thrilled," said O’Neal.

Each of the twelve entrants had their own reasons to submit a design.

"Jeff had worked on some habitat houses in the past and after the Billings Architectural Association put together the actual competition we of course had interest and wanted to give back to the community," said Fitzgerald.

"Memories, that's the biggest thing. Memories of being little or raising a family and being a little kid living in the little red house and where the Christmas tree was placed and you were able to go out on the deck with mom and dad and play with the dog in the backyard. To me that’s the most important thing," said Johnson.

“I’ll be honest some of it was for Habitat for Humanity and some of it was for my own personal growth. I love architecture and designing things," said Anderson.

"A couple common guys doing a common house plan for some people. That’s all we're doing, helping out," said Kanning.