Spend a month living in Terrell Hills and you can go the entire stretch without buying anything inside the city limits. There is nowhere to buy it. Almost no commercial retail sits inside this 1.6-square-mile city. Every errand, every dinner out, every bakery run happens somewhere else, usually a few blocks over on Broadway.
That fact alone is not surprising to anyone who has lived here a while. What is surprising is what the city just did about it. The Terrell Hills City Council unanimously approved a $2.4 million beautification project for Broadway Street, adding heritage oak trees, rebuilt pedestrian walkways, and custom lighting. The city is spending real money improving the walk to a corridor of restaurants and shops that, for the most part, sit outside its own borders. It is an odd kind of investment: infrastructure for someone else's storefronts, paid for because that's where its own residents actually go.
A City Made Entirely of Houses
Terrell Hills was platted as a residential addition in the late 1920s and incorporated in 1939, and it has stayed almost entirely residential since. It runs its own police and fire departments out of a modest municipal building at 5100 N. New Braunfels Ave., and in 1945 it fought off an annexation attempt by the City of San Antonio, a decision that's why Terrell Hills still governs itself today rather than being folded into the larger city around it.
That independence shows up in the small, specific ways city hall operates. Mayor John B. Low has lived in Terrell Hills since 1992 and has served as mayor since 2020, after six years on the city council before that. There is no commercial district here for a city government to zone around or collect much retail tax from. The city's entire relationship with retail is that its residents drive or walk somewhere else for it.
The Corridor That Isn't Even Its Own
Which is what makes the Broadway project worth paying attention to. The council's own recent meeting agendas have carried a line item for a "Broadway streetscape project update" alongside routine budget review, which tells you this isn't a one-time press release but an ongoing capital commitment the city is actively managing. Heritage oaks take years to establish canopy. Custom lighting and rebuilt walkways are the kind of infrastructure a city installs when it expects people to be walking that stretch for a long time, not just this summer.
None of the destinations on that stretch, Cappy's, BIRD Bakery, Paloma Blanca, sit inside Terrell Hills' own residential blocks. They belong to Broadway's own commercial footprint. Terrell Hills residents are simply the pedestrians the project is built for.
A city with no downtown of its own just spent seven figures making sure the walk to somebody else's is a good one.
What the Walk Actually Passes
If you're doing that walk this summer, here's roughly what you're passing:
- Cappy's Restaurant has anchored the Broadway dining scene since 1977, known for its oak-shaded patio, Tuesday through Sunday service, and a brunch menu built around Texas pot roast and jumbo lump crab cake.
- BIRD Bakery bakes on site every morning and donates whatever doesn't sell by afternoon to local organizations rather than holding it over as day-old stock.
- Paloma Blanca has operated as a family business since 1979, serving a Mexican menu on a patio that draws a steady lunch crowd.
- Bistr09 brings a French-leaning menu, steak frites and duck confit among the regulars, to a stretch of Broadway that otherwise skews Tex-Mex and American comfort food.
None of it is new this year. What's changing is the ground underneath it, literally, as the sidewalks and lighting get rebuilt around these same few blocks.
The Rest of the Year Happens Closer to Home
Not everything requires the walk to Broadway. Terrell Hills runs its own small civic calendar entirely within its own green spaces, and this year's version of it is a useful snapshot of what that looks like.
| Gathering | What it looked like | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Bike / E-Bike Safety Event, held this April | A bicycle safety class taught by a Bike Patrol Officer, a bike rodeo for younger kids, hot dogs and giveaways | Terrell Hills Police Department, 5100 N. New Braunfels Ave. |
| Annual Fourth of July Parade & Block Party | Parade lines up along Ivy Lane, ends at the Esplanade with a community-wide block party and BBQ; Eldon and Geneseo close for the morning | Geneseo Esplanade |
| Self-guided garden tour | Seven private gardens and architecturally notable homes open for the day, with ticket proceeds benefiting the city's Green Spaces Fund | Various private residences |
| Recurring Crestwood Park events | An Easter egg hunt, a holiday parade, and pictures with Santa rotate through the year at the city's largest green space | Crestwood Park and Playground |
Crestwood Park is the largest of the city's green spaces, and the parks page lists three smaller pocket greens too, at Wiltshire and North New Braunfels, Auburn and Morningside, and Eventide and Morningside, benches under shade for anyone out on a walk who wants a place to sit for a minute. None of it is retail. All of it is the kind of infrastructure a city builds when it has decided its residents' daily life will happen on its own streets and parks, and only its dining and shopping will happen somewhere else.
The garden tour in particular says something about how long this pattern has held. The Alamo Heights-Terrell Hills Garden Club traces its roots back to 1932, which means residents have been organizing around their own yards and green spaces for nearly a century, long before "walkability" was a term anyone used on purpose.
The Walk Itself Is the Point
None of this is a pitch to move here. If you already live in Terrell Hills, you already know the small city hall, the oak canopy, the fact that a trip for groceries means driving past the city line before you've gone half a mile. What's worth noticing this summer is that the city's leadership just put a number on how much it values the experience of getting from here to there. $2.4 million buys a lot of concrete and lighting fixtures. It doesn't buy a single new business inside Terrell Hills' own limits. It buys a better version of the walk to the businesses that were always somebody else's to begin with.
That's a strange thing for a city government to prioritize, and also a fairly clear statement of what this place actually is: a quiet residential enclave that has decided its own job is the houses and the parks, and everything else can happen a few blocks over, as long as the walk there is a good one.
If you're weighing a move into Terrell Hills, or wondering what your own home here might be worth as the Broadway corridor continues to change, Ryan Hoskins can walk you through it block by block. Start with a Get an Instant Home Valuation to see where your property stands today.
