Walk Broadway through Terrell Hills these days and you will notice the oaks first, or rather, you will notice where the new ones are supposed to go. Back in April, the city council voted unanimously to fund a $2.4 million project that widens the pedestrian walkways, adds heritage oak trees, and installs custom lighting along the corridor. It is the kind of project that shows up on a council agenda as a line item and then, months later, as a status update. Terrell Hills has already logged both.

What most residents will not stop to ask is who is actually paying for it. The answer says more about this city than the trees do.

A City That Funds Itself, Because It Has To

Terrell Hills is 1.6 square miles. It has its own police department, its own fire department, and its own city hall on N. New Braunfels Avenue, five miles from downtown San Antonio. It does not have a bigger neighbor's capital improvement budget to borrow against, because it fought off becoming part of that neighbor in the first place. In 1945, the City of San Antonio tried to annex Terrell Hills without putting the question to a vote in either city. Terrell Hills sued and won, and the independence has held ever since.

That independence is not just a line in the city's history. It shows up in how Broadway gets its trees.

The Broadway project runs through the same municipal budget that pays for the police officers who taught a bicycle safety class at the department on 5100 N. New Braunfels Ave. this spring, complete with a bike rodeo for younger riders and free helmets while supplies lasted. It is the same budget that funds Crestwood Park, the city's largest green space, where the Easter Egg Hunt and the holiday parade with pictures with Santa happen every year. When Terrell Hills decides to improve a street, there is no larger jurisdiction to petition. The council votes, and the residents live with the result, for better or worse, within a few blocks of wherever they happen to live.

There is a second layer to the funding story that most passersby never see. The city maintains a Green Spaces Fund, and one of its steadiest sources of income is an annual self-guided tour of seven private gardens and architecturally notable homes. Residents buy tickets to walk through their neighbors' backyards, and the proceeds go toward the same category of green infrastructure that Broadway's heritage oaks fall into. In a city this size, the connection between a Saturday afternoon garden tour and the shade on a public sidewalk is not abstract. It is closer to arithmetic.

Two Tons of Debris, By Hand

Money is only half of how Terrell Hills keeps its shared spaces up. Labor is the other half, and this spring supplied a clean example. On April 10, 2026, more than 200 residents turned out for the city's annual spring cleanup, collecting more than two tons of debris and planting new native landscaping across city parks in a single day.

Two hundred volunteers is a meaningful fraction of a city with roughly 5,000 residents. It is not a symbolic turnout organized for a photo. It is closer to what you would expect from a large extended family deciding, together, that the yard needs work before summer.

The Calendar Nobody Outsources

The same self-reliance shows up in how Terrell Hills builds its year. None of these events are run by a regional parks authority or a countywide events calendar. Each one is a city program, a city park, or a private fundraiser that feeds directly back into city infrastructure.

• The Fourth of July Parade and Block Party, which lines up along Ivy Lane and closes sections of Eldon and Geneseo before ending at the Esplanade on Geneseo for a community-wide barbecue.
• The garden tour, which opens seven private gardens to ticket holders and routes the proceeds to the Green Spaces Fund.
• A Broadway art afternoon, where local galleries, studios, and artisan vendors line the street for live music and family activities.
• An annual community-police gathering, with food trucks, live entertainment, and information booths, built around residents bringing lawn chairs and meeting their neighbors rather than watching a stage from a distance.
• The spring bike and e-bike safety event at the police department, with a certified officer teaching the class and a guided ride afterward for riders ten and older.

None of these require a trip outside city limits. Crestwood Park, Harry B. Orem Park with its playground and basketball court, and Terrell Hills Park with its walking trail and tennis courts absorb nearly all of it. A resident could spend an entire calendar year fully engaged in civic life without ever leaving a city smaller than most golf courses.

What Doesn't Move

Broadway is changing, but not everything on it is. A family-owned Mexican restaurant with a colorful patio has operated on the street since 1979, predating the current council, the current beautification budget, and most of the heritage oaks that will eventually shade it. When the new lighting and walkways are finished, that restaurant will likely still be there, doing what it has done since before most of today's residents moved in.

That contrast is worth sitting with. A city that successfully resisted absorption into San Antonio in 1945 is, eight decades later, still making its own calls about what stays and what gets reinvested in, funded by its own tax base, its own volunteers, and its own garden tour ticket sales rather than anyone else's development plan. The Broadway project did not arrive because a developer proposed it or because a countywide bond measure included it as a rider. It arrived because the council voted for it and the city had the means to pay.

For anyone who already calls Terrell Hills home, that is the detail worth carrying into the fall. The sidewalks you'll eventually walk on Broadway were not decided somewhere else. They were decided here, by people you could run into at the July 4th block party or the community-police gathering, funded in part by money that started as a ticket to see someone's garden.

That same instinct, building something on your own terms rather than accepting whatever gets handed down, is one we recognize at BGA Design & Build. Whether it's a city investing in its own Broadway or a homeowner planning a custom build or remodel in the San Antonio and Texas Hill Country area, the projects that hold up are the ones where the people living with the result had a real hand in deciding it. If you're thinking about what that looks like for your own home, contact BGA Design + Build to start the conversation.