NARR: This season on Built: bold commercial real estate from around the United States -- and the people who made it happen. Because bold, well, it isn't easy...

Cole: 94 banks told me no.

NARR: In the Sonoran Desert, a surf lagoon with six-foot waves and a beach you can actually dig your toes into, rises, and a 40-acre live-work-play district follows.

Cole: I had written offers, people who wanted to buy this property from me and I could have cleared 10 million bucks selling it. But, I just had to be committed to the vision that we all set out to build, which is something unique for the Southeast Valley.

NARR: And in San Antonio, could an abandoned brewery be turned into a neighborhood?

BILL: It had all the earmarks of a horrible business investment. And I literally held the phone away from my ear thinking, what did he not understand about what I told him. Truth, I mean, you can see it now. It wasn't what he didn't understand. It's what I didn't understand.

NARR: Sometimes it takes an outside perspective, or a partnership with a like-minded organization, to make bold ideas into a reality.

Speaker: We're in the front entryway of our beautiful resource center building, which we completed in 2019 with the aid of homemade, we would not have been able to build without them coming alongside us to build this beautiful 15,000 square foot resource center for the teen moms and little ones we serve. This is like a second home.

NARR: This is Built from Fidelity National Financial and PRX Productions. Where commercial real estate's leaders share their struggles and their achievements, so you can learn from them, and find your own bold ideas.

Cole: It was almost like. Uh, building an airplane while you're flying it,

NARR: Season 7 of Built starts November 5 on your favorite podcast app.