It’s early afternoon in the Bishop Arts District on a Tuesday, and it’s easy to see the lure of the North Oak Cliff neighborhood. Parking along North Bishop Avenue is tight as locals wander into shops and fill benches outside of eateries. I meet developers Katy Slade and Nick Venghaus outside of La Reunion, where we order a few glasses of water and iced coffee. The two long-time industry leaders ventured out about two years ago to launch Mintwood Real Estate and, along the way, have put in some groundwork for future projects and helped turn two vacant office floors in Santander Tower into a chic hotel called The Guild. Today, we were there to talk about their first ground-up project. Katy and Nick were both previously at Gables Residential for a little over a decade. She was on the development team, and he was running construction. They did a lot of really cool mixed-use deals, including the Gables McKinney Ave. The duo makes for the perfect partnership as Nick has a great capacity to understand complicated construction projects, and Katy excels at researching and understanding the needs of the market to build innovative projects. It all ties into how they could build 55 units on the site of a former 10 unit apartment building on Melba Street. Click to read more at www.dmagazine.com.