2022 Dream Street: Introducing the Builders

Three luxury homes located in the new Montrachet development in West Fort Worth are slated to open their doors for touring in March.

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The 2022 Dream Street — three high-end, luxury homes built in the new Montrachet development in West Fort Worth — is well underway. A larger, more ambitious iteration of the Dream Home, which served as Fort Worth Magazine’s flagship event for 20 years, this marks the second time that the magazine will be tripling its output and erecting three homes instead of one.

Each home, which will have different builders, architects, interior designers, and various other subcontractors, will offer a distinct take on today’s home building trends. The homes will be completed and touring will begin in March. Proceeds from touring help benefit A Wish With Wings, a Fort Worth charity that grants wishes to children with life-threatening conditions. The same month that touring is slated to begin, Fort Worth Magazine will release a special Dream Street issue that covers the ins and outs of each home — from the technology to the interior design.

Of course, the most important aspect of building a home is, in fact, the builder. Overseeing every aspect of the home from conception to completion, the builder is akin to the director a film. They delegate tasks but are keenly aware of even the most minute of details. Ultimately, while they might have received plans from an architect and furnishings from an interior designer, the home is their vision.

This year’s trio of builders includes John Webb of Heritage Homes; Tim Windmiller of Windmiller Custom Homes; and Rick Wegman, Karl Hahnfeld, John Giordano, and Rob Cocanower of HGC Residential Development.

This will mark Webb’s third straight year as a Dream Street builder; Webb built the 2019 Showcase Home and was one of the three builders for last year’s inaugural Dream Street.

Webb has over 30 years in the building business, and he formed Heritage Homes in 2014. He’s mostly concentrated on the Southlake and Colleyville areas, but he’s recently gotten into the Southwest Fort Worth market.

So why does he keep returning?

“It’s huge amount of exposure, and I enjoy doing it” Webb says. “I’m able to show off what we can do and what we’re capable of doing as far as the creativity. It’s nice to show off what all the talented team members are able to accomplish.”

A second-time Dream builder — he previously did the 2014 Dream Home — Wegman grew up in the building and real estate business and has been with HGC for 16 years.

“Rob Cocanower, John Giordano, and Karl Hahnfeld started the company 20 years ago with a garage remodel and have now constructed hundreds of Fort Worth’s finest homes,” Wegman says.

Rick Wegman, who for the purposes of this article represents the four builders of HGC Residential Development, is a bit of a renaissance man in the building and real estate business — wearing many different hats and having a foot in seemingly every area. In addition to his partnership with Cocanower, Giordano, and Hahnfeld, Wegman is also a successful real estate agent with ULTERRE.

The new builder on the block is Tim Windmiller of Windmiller Custom Homes. Unlike Webb and Wegman, Windmiller wasn’t always invested in becoming a home builder. Initially going to school at the University of Missouri to become a medical doctor, his cousin, Andrew Hall, convinced him to move to Texas and get into home sales. After working as his cousin’s assistant for Legacy Homes, the pair sell 123 homes in one year, and Windmiller never looked back.

Windmiller had a stint at Clarity Homes, where he learned how to build, and he started his own company in 2008 — just as the market took a turn for the worse.

“And the unique thing about that is I had so many bankers tell me like, ‘What are you trying to do? Why are you trying to go into business when all these builders are going out of business?’” Windmiller says. “And my comment to them was, ‘This is the only time for any small guy to enter the market.’

“I finally found a bank to work with me. They saw the value, listened to my story, and allowed me to grow through the downturn. And then, with the market uptick, we went from doing 10 to 12 homes to 30-plus homes.”

Despite a healthy dose of competitiveness among the three, they also want the entire project to succeed.

“The three construction companies have been working together since we started discussing Dream Street,” Wegman says. “We want the three houses to complement each other in terms of price, quality, and amenities. It’s been very collaborative.”

We caught up with the builders who gave us a sneak peek into what we can expect from each home.

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John Webb: I heard someone say, “There’s only so many ways that you can design a four-bedroom house.” But I think what’s going to make this house very unique is working with [interior designer] Susan Semmelmann. She brings another level of creativity to the interior design and features of the home.

The home will be a single story, modern Hill Country design.

You walk in the front door, and you’re looking straight through a large window out towards the outdoor pool area kind of thing. This is kind of a COVID-driven way of designing homes now, but you know how you used to put the study or the office up close to the front door where everybody could see it? It was a real central location in the home. And I’m kind of noticing that as we’re designing homes now, more people are working from home, and they’re wanting to put their office in a more remote area of the home so that dad or mom can go off to work and have some privacy from the day-to-day family activities.

So, the office of this home is actually out in the back of the property and in the cabana part of the home.

Rick Wegman: We wanted to compliment the amazing topography of Montrachet and take advantage of the incredible location.  We are the only builder to actually have our offices in the development and are absolutely thrilled to be building custom homes in this amazing development.

The home will be approximately 6,000 square feet and priced around $2 million. It’s going to be magnificent.

Tim Windmiller: If you go to the Dallas market, you see a lot of the modern-esque stuff. And then when you come to Fort Worth, people have a lot of traditional flairs that they mix in with it. And a lot of builders will mix architecture styles, which I don’t like to do. I like a home to last and, as it ages, become better looking with the landscape.

And so, what has been popular in the past is a modern farmhouse. Well, there is a style out of South Africa, which is their version of a farmhouse. It’s called Cape Dutch architecture. It has a lot of contemporary flairs, but it also has a lot of traditional flairs and a very specific architecture style.

Our goal was to do something that brought us contemporary flair, but also stayed along the lines with a lot of traditional aspects that people like in Fort Worth.