Danny Smith was taking a holiday break in New Mexico when one of his sons called with devastating news on the first day of 2022. 

“Dad, your shop is on fire,” Smith recalls upon hearing his 125,000-square-foot Matt’s Building Materials store in Pharr was engulfed in flames.

Baldo Arriaga, a 20 year-plus employee of Matt’s, got to the store 30 minutes after the blaze was reported to the local fire department. 

“To see the building going down, a place where you’ve worked for years and have so many memories, I couldn’t bear to watch,” said Arriaga, Matt’s territory flooring manager. 

Plans and ambitions to start anew now replace the despair of a year ago when Smith said his family had no idea if they would rebuild. A groundbreaking in mid-December at the same Pharr location where the fire took the original store made it official. An iconic Rio Grande Valley business that started in 1969 and now has three locations across the region will build a new main store to go with additional retail space and an events center.

“Big store, big dreams,” said Isaac Smith, one of Danny’s three sons who run and own the business with their father. 

The family and business patriarch looked over a crowd of visitors at the groundbreaking and spoke of meeting with his employees after the fire. He says there were long discussions following when the family leaned heavily on faith to decide what to do next. 

“We could have called it quits and been fine,” Danny Smith told the crowd. “But the boys were adamant. They wanted to continue with the business, so I said, ‘OK, let’s get up every morning and do the right things and we’ll end up where we should be.'”

Newer & Modern

A 90,000-square-foot store will be the centerpiece of the Smith family’s new development. It will sit in the shadow of the reconfigured Pharr Interchange.

The new business complex will include 33,000 square feet of retail space to lease out. It will include an events center of over 10,000 square feet to host community events and celebrations. The original Pharr store lost to the fire was a huge wooden structure with the look and sensibilities of the early 1970s. The new complex will look decidedly different with modern flourishes and will be a three-building complex with an adjacent lumberyard that survived the January 2022 fire.

“We’re doing it newer and modern,” Isaac Smith said. “This will be a new chapter of our business. What we had was home and now we’re going to build a new one.”

The new development should be complete by the end of 2023. It’s a long road back not only for the Smith family but for their employees as well. Matt’s had a 120-employee workforce when the fire hit. Afterwards, the family had to lay off over half of the employees with the loss of inventory and retail space in Pharr. Many of them, like Arriaga, are longtime employees. He was fortunate in keeping his job over the last year. He spoke of hopes to bring many former employees back with the Pharr location to be at full strength.

“It was life changing when Danny told us the family was going to rebuild,” Arriaga said at the groundbreaking. “I think we’ll be back bigger and stronger.”

Beginnings Of A Business

Matt’s history goes back to the late 1960s when its first store opened in San Benito as the Valley was rebuilding after the catastrophic damage inflicted by Hurricane Beulah.

It was called Valley Cash & Carry Building Materials at its inception with its original owner Cecil McDonald. This marked the beginning of the lumber, fixtures, plumbing, construction and home supply stores that were to go across the Valley. The Pharr location opened in 1971 with a Palmview location added in 2015.

Ira Matt purchased the business in the mid-1970s and hired Danny Smith, who had years of experience in the lumber and home supply business in Louisiana. Smith’s arrival in the Valley led to a permanent stay as he managed and oversaw the operations of what was now called Matt’s Cash & Carry Building Materials, with the San Benito and Pharr locations.

In 1999, Smith accepted Matt’s offer to sell the business to him with the owner’s retirement. Smith would eventually bring his three sons into the business and they would become the faces of Matt’s with television commercials touting the company’s down home and personal touch with its customers. The business is now Matt’s Building Materials. A new generation of Smiths is ready to take over the family business from their father as Matt’s marks a rebirth.

“Our dad told us to go by three principles,” Isaac Smith told the crowd at the groundbreaking. “Take care of your employees, serve your customers and pay your bills on time. Those values and our faith in God have seen us through this tragedy along with the encouragement of the community to get us back where we are today.”