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…
The Dallas Cowboys recently concluded another disappointing season but the lack of success will hardly lessen the devout following the NFL franchise enjoys in the Rio Grande Valley. George Dunn, a senior retail manager for the Cowboys, says the RGV ranks third in Texas for sale of team merchandise, T-shirts, caps and all manner of gear with the familiar blue star. The third-best market ranking (only Dallas-Fort Worth and San…
Annelise Rosas’ growing-up years in Monterrey and Austin left a yearning for another city of her youth. Brownsville is the place where Rosas feels the most comfortable. The Rio Grande Valley’s largest city is the best fit for the interchange of languages she speaks. In Monterrey, Rosas was seen as an American and a bit of an outcast despite being the daughter of Mexican-born parents. The view of her in…
Rebecca Rodriguez describes herself as being a florist – and a farmer. The latter is a distinction well-earned given Rodriguez grows many of the flowers she sells at her shop in Harlingen. Rodriguez tills the soil and grows an array of flowers at a family farm located between Harlingen and Santa Rosa. Her farm-grown flowers include marigolds, zinnias, cosmos and anemones. She refers to the farm-to-shop model as being “sustainably…