Wellness at Home: How a Dallas Builder is Turning Loss into a Living Mission

Wellness at Home: How a Dallas Builder is Turning Loss into a Living Mission

The latest Pro Builder Idea Home is part showcase, part charitable platform, but it started with a family's grief.

When Nancy Riseman found the lot for her latest project, it was by chance. She and her husband Bill, co-founders of Riseman Development, a design-build firm that has been fashioning custom homes across the Dallas-Fort Worth metro for 50 years, were considering something entirely different. A high-rise, maybe. Something low maintenance, definitely.

Instead, she came across an acre-and-a-half in the middle of the city where a large pond was teeming with turtles, a flock of Canadian geese, and something harder to name.

“It was very soothing to the soul, as really nothing had been,” Riseman says.

So they bought it. That lot is now the site of Wellness at Home, the latest idea home produced by Pro Builder, with a target debut next summer, June 2027.

The project is part showcase, part charitable platform, and its focus on health and wellness is personal, coming from a loss that changed everything for the Risemans.

The Story Behind the Home
In 2017, the couple lost their son Ryan to complications following treatment for acute lymphoblastic leukemia. He was diagnosed at 22, while in graduate school at Tulane.

He had survived the cancer (enduring both an adult and pediatric chemotherapy regimen at MD Anderson and Children's Health in Dallas) before pneumonia took him in two days.

Riseman says her son’s illness introduced them to the challenges of a largely overlooked population in oncology: adolescents and young adults, or AYAs. While pediatric cancers, and those among the elderly, are well resourced, Riseman says this young adult cohort is a missing middle of sorts, extremely underserved in research and cancer care.

"The odds on the outcomes are terrible," she says.

Riseman recalls a moment during treatment, when Ryan pointed to the wall of donors at Children's Health and told his mother he wanted his name there someday. That moment never came for Ryan directly, but it serves as this project's north star.

“When you lose a child, every ounce of your being is consumed with managing that loss,” she says. “But we’ve looked for ways that we can give back.”

The Risemans set up a fund in their son’s name, under the direction of his former oncologist who took great interest in this AYA population, and they’ve been steady donors to it since.

But in 2019, they found a way to bring more awareness to the work they were doing. After attending the International Builders’ Show in Las Vegas, and touring an idea home there, Nancy and Bill began envisioning an Idea Home of their own that could bring trade partners and the public together with a charitable component to benefit AYA research and cancer care.

The nearby Dallas Market Center was a natural partner for them from the start, but then COVID hit, stopping everything. And the project stalled.

What emerged on the other side, though, may be stronger for the delay, Riseman says, because of the overwhelming interest in health and wellness that came post-pandemic, with homeowners increasingly focused on air quality, natural light, non-toxic materials, and the ways a home environment affects their health and well-being. The addition of EndeavorB2B as a production partner, the media company behind Pro Builder, also brings additional reach to the project.

"I think so many different parts came together," Riseman says. “The whole thing just feels Divine.”

As the Risemans ready to break ground on their project, dubbed Wellness at Home, they’re connecting the property's design to a much larger idea about how we live, stay well, and even how we recover inside our homes.

The Design Vision
Fittingly, the home plays up its tranquil setting with a goal of making it feel like a getaway from the noise of everyday life.

A circular entry drive evokes a sense of enclosure upon arrival, almost like a hug.  “It’s like the circle is closing around you,” says Riseman. “It just feels good.”

The structure itself also wraps around a large pond to maximize views from living spaces, where the palette is intentionally subdued; it’s a choice rooted in the belief that nature is itself a wellness feature.

Though quite large at over 11,000 square feet, Riseman says the spaces inside this home are meaningful, dictated by their intended use. A spacious exercise and wellness studio features a cold plunge tub, and large expanses of glass with views to the landscaping outside.

Outdoor entertaining spaces are also expansive, designed to accommodate up to 100 guests (Riseman has plans for ongoing charitable events), supported by a full catering kitchen. A casita and multiple suite-level accommodations address multi-generational living, a priority the Risemans feel strongly about at a time when family isolation is increasingly common.

The Ask for Partners
As the couple builds out the model for this project, they aim to align with partners who might consider adopting Children's Health's AYA fund as their community partner, as a way to honor their son’s memory and help boost their mission to improve the odds for so many others of his cohort.

"That is the hope," Nancy says.

The home and overall commitments are still taking shape, of course. But the driving mission to bring greater health and wellness to their community has been clear for the Risemans for years.

Future coverage will explore the wellness design features integrated throughout Wellness at Home. The home is slated for its debut in June 2027.