The Building Texas Show

CTEC at VentureFest: $12K wins and a $100K student pitch. Central Texas Electric Co-op sponsors VentureFest and Incubator EDU in Fredericksburg. Tachi Hinojosa, CEO and President of CTEC, breaks down why a Hill Country electric co-op coaches student teams, shows up at the pitches, and backs kids who can raise real money—including a first-place VentureFest team that won $12,000 and another team tha...

Big bank deposits leave Texas for New York. In Fredericksburg, community banks put that capital back into the Hill Country. John Wells, Market President of Texas Regional Bank, on local banking, brain drain, and the high school incubator keeping talent in Fredericksburg Texas. John Wells runs Texas Regional Bank’s Fredericksburg market. He walked the path from frontline banker to market president,...

A new Texas outdoor site is about to open between Boerne and Bandera, and it is not a state park. Stephanie Kwiatkowski, superintendent of the Albert & Bessie Kronkosky State Natural Area, explains why that distinction matters, what 28 miles of trail will actually feel like, and why late fall 2026 is the target to let the public in. ABK sits on 3,814 acres along Highway 46 at Pipe Creek, on th...

San Antonio already has the pieces international companies say they want: cybersecurity talent, a growing bioscience corridor, defense and advanced manufacturing, and a city built on relationships instead of transactions. Dr. Lina Rugova’s job is to make sure those companies actually see it. Dr. Rugova is Operations Chair and a founding member of the San Antonio Applied Innovation Council, founder...

Texas kids are pitching on stage in Mason while a Hill Country co-op backs the schools and the tents behind them. Madysen McDonald of Hill Country Telephone Cooperative sits down with Justin McKenzie in Ingram, Texas, ahead of Hill Country VentureFest. HCTC is putting $10,000 into each of 26 schools, showing up under Friday Night Lights, and wiring rural members with landline, fiber, and fixed wir...

Ashe juniper, the "mountain cedar" covering the Hill Country, is native here. There just used to be a lot less of it. Grass fires swept through and killed the young trees, because a juniper dies once it loses its green. We stopped letting those fires burn, and now the hillsides are thick with a tree full of oils that goes up fast once it catches. Firefighters call that a ladder fuel. It's how a gr...

Your content has two audiences now: humans and machines. Mark Willaman of Newsworthy.ai breaks down why the press release is still the perfect document for AI search, SEO, and brand discoverability. SEO can get you into the library. AI retrieval decides whether you get pulled off the shelf. We cover structured, entity-rich press releases, the 28-day news cycle, multi-format distribution (articles,...

San Antonio culture is not a side show. It is how the city keeps a downtown worth showing up for, a heritage you cannot outsource, and a free stage most cities only talk about. Suhail Arastu of Musical Bridges Around the World breaks down why San Antonio culture matters in 2026: 278 free concerts last year (inching toward 300), sister-city orchestras at the Tobin, public art from the River Walk to...

Celebrate 50 years of the Sisterdale Fire Department. See why the volunteer fire department model is far from dying out. Seventy percent of America's firefighters serve as volunteers, yet many departments struggle to find recruits. In this first part of our 3-part series, we sit down with Chief Brian Riley to discuss the future of the Sisterdale Fire Department. He argues that the volunteer fire d...

Roughly 70% of America's firefighters are volunteers, and most of those departments can't find enough people to keep trucks staffed. Kendall County is one of them. Modern homes reach flashover in five minutes, but rural fire response takes twenty. Your volunteer fire department needs help. Chief Brian Riley runs Sisterdale VFD, in the Texas Hill Country, with a roster that floats between 30 and 35...

$400 to $500 electric on a rental under 2,000 square feet. New 3,200 square foot house in San Antonio: $150 to $200. He said it's the windows. Gabby and Jonathan own First Choice Windows and Home Exteriors, based in Bulverde and working San Antonio. Gabby could not find a locally owned window shop in a city built on small business. They left the 75-truck model, sell Andersen and Pella at a lower p...

Sixty to seventy percent of roof claims get denied. Jasper Shin of Texas Roof Guardians says the average file is already short $3,000 to $5,000, and San Antonio took five hail storms last year. Insurance is incentivized not to pay. Jasper walks the full-property inspection, the three-reinspection rule, Xactimate supplements, mortgage-split checks, and why you call a local roofer before you call th...

Pflugerville Texas went from a joke that you could not buy socks in city limits to advanced manufacturing, semiconductor, life sciences, dual-use defense, and aerospace. Jerry W. Jones Jr., executive director of the Pflugerville Community Development Corporation (PCDC), breaks down Texas economic development that stays people-first. PCDC is in its 25th year. Jerry's filter is simple: they will not...

San Antonio's water runs 10 to 32 grains hard—and in Helotes, up to 150.   Hidden damage in your home  Hard water damaging appliances.  Jason Stevenson from Kinetico joins us at the San Antonio Home and Garden Show to break down what that actually does to your home: shortened appliance lifespans, tankless water heater warranties voided at 10 grains hard water, and shower fixtures that wear out twi...

Texas State University is up to $183 million in research expenditures, and invention disclosures have tripled in the past two years. Dr. Matt Sorenson, the university's first Director of Venture Development, breaks down what happens after a researcher files a patent — and who actually owns it. Justin McKenzie sits down with Dr. Sorenson in San Marcos to talk through Star Park, the BobCatalyst Inno...

A fiberglass pool can last a lifetime — or fail early — and the difference is almost never the shell brand alone. It is who installs it, how they build the site, and whether they are certified to do the work. Jeff and Kelley Turner, owners of Staycation Fiberglass Pools, join Justin McKenzie at the San Antonio Home and Garden Show for episode 2 of the San Antonio Home and Garden Series. They break...

Jason Roemer has taught business at Fredericksburg High School for 27 years — the last two building the school's INCubatoredu program from scratch. In year one, his students launched six businesses, pitched to a sold-out theater, and walked away with $21,000 in seed funding and scholarships. Learn more about INCubatoredu at https://www.unchartedlearning.org/ In this episode of The Building Texas S...

Pronghorn don't jump fences. They just stop. That single fact nearly wiped them out of West Texas, and it's the reason Borderlands Research Institute exists. In this episode of the Building Texas Show, host Justin McKenzie sits down in Alpine with Lalo Gonzalez, chair of the Department of Natural Sciences at Sul Ross State University, to talk about how BRI helped rebuild the West Texas pronghorn p...

She spent decades building buildings — now she's built a barbecue empire. On this episode of The Building Texas Show, filmed live at the San Antonio Home & Garden Show, host Justin McKenzie sits down with Sloan Rinaldi, a 4th-generation pitmaster and founder of Texas Q, to talk construction industry innovation, why she decided to chase a family legacy that traces back to 1909 in Crockett, Texa...

In San Antonio, you can go up to 300 square feet without a building permit. Tuff Shed designs stick-built custom sheds, studios, chicken coops, and greenhouses — then builds most of them on site in a single day. Richard Castellanos from Tuff Shed joins Justin McKenzie at the San Antonio Home and Garden Show for episode 1 of the San Antonio Home and Garden Series. They cover full customization, how...

This Texas high school built a quiet pipeline to SpaceX and NASA, and now it's teaching freshmen to pitch for $20,000 in real startup money. David Pedregon, community champion for the Incubator EDU program at Fredericksburg ISD, joins Justin McKenzie on The Building Texas Show to explain how a Hill Country CTE track produces aerospace careers and student founders at the same time. About 29 years a...

LiftFund has deployed 525 grants and loans totaling more than $17 million to Texas Hill Country small businesses in the last year alone. Now they've launched the 2026 Texas Hill Country Flood Relief Program — grants of up to $10,000 for small businesses and nonprofits in 16 eligible counties. Amy Hereford, President and CEO of LiftFund, joins Justin McKenzie in San Antonio to explain how a 30-year...

San Marcos just bought almost 200 acres to extend its runway for commercial air service. Berry Aviation runs DoD work from the airport. And the economic development director still gets asked: when does this become a spaceport? Helen Ramirez, Economic Development for the City of San Marcos, breaks down why this I-35 college town sits between two mega regions (Austin and San Antonio), what the 2,000...

ERCOT has over 300,000 megawatts in the queue by 2032. Peak load today is about 85 gigawatts. That is roughly 4x the power the Texas grid already handles. Nash Whitney of Stella Power Company breaks down behind-the-meter power, the fix large loads are using so data centers and manufacturers stop leaning on the residential grid. We cover: → What behind-the-meter power actually is (and what it is no...

UTPB serves 7,400 students in the heart of the Permian Basin — and most come from within 150 miles. President Dr. Woodley breaks down how the University of Texas Permian Basin trains the energy, aerospace, and advanced manufacturing workforce powering West Texas. The only regional comprehensive university in the Permian Basin sits next to a spaceport, inside the oilfield that Dr. Woodley says powe...