Out of the Ordinary

摘要

At age five Diane Cheatham already had it all worked out: Instead of pretending to be a doctor or a cop, she played developer, assigning subcontracting jobs to her pint-size colleagues as they dreamed up houses. The instinct lay dormant through her early career as a CPA but surfaced when she later started to work in a developer's office. Then, at 40, she struck out on her own building homes-all of them modernist. In 2005, with some 60 houses under her belt, Diane set about creating an entire neighborhood in Dallas, on an overgrown 14-acre property in the northeast part of the city. She and her husband, Chuck Cheatham, a financial executive, made a deal, mostly with each other. Diane would sell 50 lots carved from the site, which they called Urban Reserve, and contract the construction of residences. With the profits, the Cheathams would pay for their own house on the land.