Bob Mills and his oldest son cut through two ribbons in late August and officially brought a Bob Mills Furniture store to the Rio Grande Valley market. The company’s 12th store in its chain is located in San Juan and is the first one south of San Antonio. The Oklahoma City-based company now has nine stores in Texas. It represents a significant addition among the Valley’s furniture store offerings with…
Jeremy Smith’s family-owned business demonstrated a steely resolve in getting through double catastrophes over the last five years – and coming out of both revived and refreshed. “Two things – the pandemic and the fire – and you learn to take what the market gives you,” Smith said of COVID-19 and a 2022 New Year’s Day fire that destroyed Matt’s Building Materials flagship store in Pharr. “You never let a…
The 2025 edition of H-E-B’s Quest for Texas Best competition is down to 10 finalists and one of them is based in McAllen. Sully Villareal’s Deli Spice Cooking Spices has made the cut among more than 370 products up for H-E-B’s review. An H-E-B press release states about Deli Spice, “Every blend is tested by families and perfected by a Mexican mom in Texas to help people cook authentic birria…
The McAllen Chamber of Commerce, in collaboration with the City of McAllen and Visit McAllen, is currently hosting the McAllen Shop Hop, a celebration of the city’s vibrant and diverse shopping scene. With this initiative, shoppers can discover featured stores and participate in a scavenger hunt with the chance to win a $1,000 shopping spree. The tour officially kicked off on in April and runs through Father’s Day in June,…
One Rio Grande Valley car dealer whose name is today emblazoned across the region got his start in a modest-sized store selling Buicks just blocks south of the courthouse in Edinburg. Bert Ogden sold cars as a side business before opening his first dealership in the 1960s. He would purchase used cars from upstate Texas sources, restore them to running condition, and then sell them in the Valley. The downtown…
Carmen Garza describes she and her daughters as antique collectors who “love the hunt” and they have plenty of spaces to fill at their shop in downtown Harlingen. Jackson Street Antiques on the corner of Jackson and Commerce streets is one of the anchors of the specialty niche that downtown Harlingen has developed over the years. The collection of antique stores and like-minded businesses have given the downtown area an…
Joseph Mayers by training is an auto technician who also has a flair for style and design as part of his skill set. All of those skills and others would be called upon in his early 30s when he became visually impaired due to an ongoing medical condition. Today, Mayers says, he is legally blind and is not able to see clearly past 20 feet without magnification. The adversity he…
La Pale’s store on International Boulevard in Brownsville is a vibrant ice cream shop featuring Mexican-style desserts. A big whiteboard in Daisy Alcazar’s back office at La Pale Frozen Bar in Brownsville tells the story of a small business making the leap to something much bigger. “HEB COUNTDOWN 48 DAYS TILL PICKUP,” is written in big blue letters. The message was written in late 2024 before the first delivery truck…
McAllen’s commercial corridor did not stretch much further north than Dove Avenue in the early 1980s. Flash forward to the present and the city’s north-bound landscape has been transformed. What was once far north McAllen is now a restaurant and shopping mecca. Developer Shavi Mahtani’s plans will add to making the area north of 10th Street and Trenton Road a place where families and friends will meet to shop and…
The City of McAllen has shattered its all-time sales tax record, receiving an unprecedented $11.9 million in February’s sales tax allocation for the same month of December (2024 vs 2023). This is a 12.3 percent increase over last year’s collection for the same period. The milestone surpasses the previous high of $10.6 million collected last year. “McAllen’s long-term strategy of becoming a destination city, encouraging booming residential and commercial development, facilitating international…