Chronic Pain Specialist in Four Corners, TX

Heavy rains in late 2022 caused some delay in the original projected completion dates for new homes in the Somerset at Sinton housing development. DeveloperWiley McIlwain, Managing Partner - Somerset Land Company, claimed that the weather last fall and winter had set them back at least 45 days.

In September of 2022, the News of San Patricio reported that groundbreaking for the new project happened in the fall of 2021.

“Somerset PID No 1 is formed and we’ve funded the bonds in February and we are under construction of the water, waist water and drainage with anticipation of having this available to our clients by the end of the year,” said McIlwain.

“What we are developing now is the northwest quadrant of the property known as Somerset PID No 1. So far in PID No 1, we are developing 465 single family lots for D. R. Horton who is the nation's largest home builder.”

These homes will be built out over a three year period.

The corner of the developed area will include a travel center on five acres. Next to that, a new 20,000 square-foot strip center plaza and five quickserve restaurants are planned. We also have a letter of intent to build an apartment complex and several different national retail stores.

“On the southwest quadrant, we are under contract with San Patricio County for them to buy 25 acres,” McIlwain said. “They are going to build a new courthouse facility which will be approximately 100,000 square feet.”

In September, Mcllwain expected to have homes started right around the first of the year (2023).

“We’re keeping our fingers crossed, we don’t need any more rain to slow things up,” he said.

When asked about a time frame he said:

“I would venture to say that during 2023, eighty to one hundred new homes will be built there.”

As of early June, the developer has completed 168 lots with utilities and is starting on the next 250 lots. No new home construction has started as of yet. Mekaila Ortiz, Marketing Coordinator for D. R. Horton home builders said that Somerset at Sinton did see some delays.

“So I think everyone at our office is especially excited to start building here in this lovely town,” Ortiz said. “Dates are still being finalized, but we are projected to start building soon, and you should see a lot more activity in the coming months. While each community is different, especially ones in new cities, we usually have pricing and start selling homes a bit after the framing stage.”

D.R. Horton has released the floor plans and elevations for the community.

“These are, of course, subject to change, and all information is approximate,” said Ortiz. “Sinton will have our “O” and “P” elevations which feature brick similar to our London Towne, Rancho Vista, and Callicoatte communities.”

According to Ortiz, these plans have definitely been our most popular plans in other communities due to feeling more open and spacious. We are expecting these to be our upgraded homes with granite counters and dual sinks in the primary suite bath.

For more updates, Ortiz encourages people to sign up for their First-to-Know Sinton Email list, where D. R. Horton sends out information about the Sinton community. They can sign up online athttps://www.drhorton.com/texas/coastal-bend/corpus-christi/somerset-at-sinton or call their office at 361-256-7860.

Houston-based multifamily developer Allied Orion Group paid $14 million for vacant land on U.S. 192 in the Four Corners area with approved plans for a mixed-use concept with a new restaurant and apartments.

The transaction covered 16.6 acres and consisted of three parcels, two of which previously served as sports fields for the former Champions World Resort next door. That hotel sold in 2020 and has reopened as Champions Village workforce housing after a full renovation. Its neighbor to the west is Osceola Fire Rescue station 71 and the Tierra Vista apartments.

AOG’s management portfolio includes hundreds of affordable and market-rate apartment communities in Texas and scattered sites across other states, including one in Florida. The company development arm has completed or sold dozens of apartment complexes, all in Texas.

The seller was a group of Miami investors led by Todd Linden, founder of Circle Capital Partners who bought the land in late 2021 for $7 million and took it through rezoning and permitting. He told GrowthSpotter CCP in 2022 they already had a buyer under contract when they began the entitlement process.

“We look for opportunities to buy land in very good locations that we can entitle and then sell to the developer,” Linden said. “We don’t take the development risk. So we’re entitling this asset, and then we’re selling it to a proven developer that I’m not going to mention at this time, that’s going to build multifamily apartments.”

Osceola County approved a conceptual plan calling for a two-phase project with 364 apartments slated for phase 1, followed by a proposed 4,000-square-foot restaurant on a 1.1-acre commercial lot. The plan by Harris Civil Engineers creates a public park space along the W192 road frontage to comply with the county’s design guidelines. The restaurant would have outdoor seating in front of the building and parking. The W192 streetscape also would be extended to include the paver walkway, benches and enhanced landscaping.

The site plan also shows a large clubhouse, pool, courtyard and dog park. The development matrix calls for 184 one-bedroom units, 142 two-bedroom units and 38 three-bedroom units. The maximum building height according to the conceptual plan is four stories, but elevations submitted to the county from FK Architecture show 3-story walk-up apartment buildings.

Officials with AOG could not be reached for comment.

The Four Corners submarket is home to several new apartment communities, including the Dolce Living at Royal Palms, which sold last summer for $95 million, and The Retreat at Sunset Walk in Margaritaville Resort, which were completed last year by the Falcone Group. More new developments are in the pipeline, including The Registry at Grass Lake on Avalon Road and Madison Waterstar.

Have a tip about Central Florida development? Contact me at [email protected] or (407) 420-6261, or tweet me at @LKinslerOGrowth. Follow GrowthSpotter on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

It appears Constellation has had enough of the craft beer sector. It’s not difficult to see why. The company bought Ballast Point Brewing in 2016 for $1 billion at the incredible height of the craft brewery acquisition craze. Constellation borrowed $400 million to make that transaction happen. Only a few years later in 2019, Constellation sold the Ballast Point brand to Illinois-based Kings and Convicts Brewing Co. for supposedly something like $40+ million.

In 2023, Constellation is now shedding the rest of its craft beer brands — Florida’s Funky Buddha Brewery and Texas’ Four Corners Brewing Co. — and saying see ya to the craft sector. When it comes to beer, Constellation is a fan of Mexican imports like Modelo and Corona (and why not?!?) and I guess collaboration beers with Luke Bryan (Two Lane).

News just dropped that the founders of Funky Buddha Brewery — Ryan and KC Sentz — are reacquiring their Oakland Park, Florida.-based business from Constellation Brands. Its flagship beer portfolio, including Floridian and Hop Gun, will remain available for distribution. From the press release:

“Beverage innovation has always been our biggest strength, and Ryan and his team have some incredible ideas in the pipeline,” said KC Sentz, Owner and Co-Founder of Funky Buddha Brewery. “As we approach our 10th anniversary, it seems like the perfect time for our business to evolve and reignite the community’s passion for craft beverages.”

Funky Buddha was founded in 2010 in Boca Raton, Florida, by husband and wife Ryan and Giani Sentz. As the demand for Funky Buddha’s beers grew, Ryan and Giani invited Ryan’s brother KC Sentz, and his wife Melissa Sentz, to join the business. In 2013, the Sentz family started Funky Buddha Brewery, located in the heart of Oakland Park’s burgeoning Culinary Arts District. The brand was acquired by Constellation Brands in 2017 where it went through a rebranding.

“We enjoyed working with Constellation and we learned a lot from them. As we embark on the next chapter, we plan to push boundaries and create entirely new drinking experiences in beer and beyond,” added Ryan Sentz, Owner and Co-Founder. “We’ll be serving good vibes on tap for many years to come.”

The reacquisition of Funky Buddha Brewery by the Sentz brothers is targeted for June 2023.

Complementing this move, Texas news outlets announced last week that Constellation was selling Four Corners Brewing back to its original owners as well. Four Corners was founded by three friends — George Esquivel, Greg Leftwich and Steve Porcari — in 2012 in west Dallas. Grounded in Texas roots, Four Corners’ portfolio plays up Hispanic-American styles, flavors and branding that complemented Constellation’s marquee beer brands, pushing popular nameplates like Local Buzz Honey-Rye Golden Ale and El Chingón IPA. Even with similar beers, the fit wasn’t exactly right.

From the The Dallas Morning News:

“This is a small and growing brand, and it needs different attention and focus, and that’s what we’re going to put into it,” Esquivel tells The Dallas Morning News. “We’re getting back to the entrepreneurial roots we started with.”

Here is Esquivel a few years ago, when I interviewed him after the acquisition:

“Mexican imports are about heritage and tradition; while craft beers are typically about flavor and adventure. Four Corners Brewing bridges both. Texas is a special place when one considers flavor profiles versus environment. The climate is hot and humid, so you constantly crave refreshment. Meanwhile, Texas food is as bold as can be — smoked meats, Tex-Mex, tacos with salsas and chiles. That’s standard fair. Our intent is to balance the two dynamics with flavors that pair with bold food but still quench a thirst.”

In finale, I guess kudos to Constellation for selling these brands back to the folks who started them.

When Four Corners started in the craft beer business in 2012, just a handful of breweries were operating in North Texas. Skip ahead 10 years, and now it's a thriving scene that weighs in with around 100 breweries, and Four Corners had a big hand in that.

Specifically, the founders tackled the city code as it applied to breweries in Dallas. Not very sexy, but certainly necessary.

"We literally opened the code," co-founder George Esquival said recently. "We spent some of our seed money that we could have bought an extra tank with to instead open the city code, to change the code, to define breweries for the city of Dallas. And that was a big bet early."

By big bet, he's referring to an early belief that Dallas should — and could — be a true craft beer city.

Esquival and his partner, co-founder Gregg Leftwich, took a gamble, hired a lawyer and went through several rounds with the city. Leftwich's signature is on the actual city code that allows brewing in Dallas.

"We’re craft beer fans first," Esquival said. "So, we said let's spend a little more money to make it good for everyone. And we’re still very proud of that fact."

Did the gamble pay off? By the looks of things, tenfold. They grew out of their initial brewery in Trinty Groves and, in 2017, graduated to their current bigger space in The Cedars that has an 18,000-square-foot production facility and a 10,000-square-foot taproom along with a kitchen and large biergarten in the middle of it all. Four Corners' beers are found in stores, bars and restaurants throughout North Texas.

More important, they've built a community, which might be best demonstrated through lotería.

We recently headed over on a Thursday evening to play and, of course, have a few beers and some nachos. Lotería is a Mexican game much like bingo, except instead of playing with your grandma at the VFW at a table with overfilled ashtrays, it's a brewery with a much younger crowd, and the music and beer is way better.

Four Corners started hosting games in 2017, and they've garnered a devoted following since. Every table in the taproom was taken. Facebook says it starts at 7 p.m., but that's more like a suggestion or goal. The game actually gets going closer to 8 p.m.

If you've never played before, it's pretty simple: grab a couple of lotería tablas, or cards (two at most), and a cup full of bottle caps. The emcee will explain the rules, which they make as they go. One game might require all four corners to win, the next may call for a horizontal or diagonal line. Guys at a table next to us who are regulars explained that traditional lotería requires the entire board to be covered, but just four squares allow the games to go faster.

The game moves fast once it starts. Squares are called in quickly, and you might have a hard time understanding at first, but it becomes easier as you become more familiar with your card and learn terms like paraguas (umbrella) and escalera (ladder). Photos and numbers help (sometimes). At times everyone yells out together (like when the ladder card is called for some reason) and for another card, everyone toasts.

They have swag bags for the winner of each game. We never won, so can't say what exactly the loot is, but it's along the lines of a T-shirt or koozie. For the final game, the prize was a large tin decorative lotería tabla.

To win you have to yell, "Lotería!" (never "Bingo!"). As the night goes along you'll need to be louder. The emcee checks prospective winning cards, if you actually do win (surprising how many people thought they had won, but didn't) you get booed walking back to your seat.

There are five-minute-ish breaks between games to grab another beer, catch up on the latest gossip or get tacos. It lasts just a couple of hours and makes for a fun Thursday evening.

Four Corners Brewing Company is independent again. After a five-year run with Constellation Brands—the parent company of Corona, Modelo, Pacífico, and wines like Meiomi, Robert Mondavi, and The Prisoner—the brewery’s founders bought it back this June, returning the Cedars-based company to its local roots.

They’ve got big plans to return Four Corners to its original spirit. But what does that mean? What does it mean for a brewery to become independent again after a big takeover, and how does that affect us as drinkers and fans?

For the average beer-loving visitor, there wasn’t anything wrong with Four Corners during its ownership by Constellation Brands. You probably only noticed a few hiccups. The brewery didn’t offer beer to go, like almost every other Dallas taproom, because Constellation’s international size exceeded the limit imposed by Texas legislators. It didn’t throw its own events, instead playing host to events by outside groups. And—if you looked closely enough—Four Corners’ beer mix wasn’t changing as quickly as it had before.

That, says co-founder and partner George Esquivel, was a sign of deeper behind-the-scenes effects of corporate ownership.

“[Pre-acquisition] we were turning stuff around in 15-16 weeks from having an idea of a beer to getting it out to market,” he explains. “And [with Constellation] it was every bit of nine months for us to get something new out the door. So to compete with brewers of our size who were cranking stuff out—we were way behind the curve.”

For visitors, that’s the main effect of re-independence: the brewery’s irreverent, part-Hispanic personality will be on display through constant experimenting with new recipes and seasonal options. Instead of waiting for layers of approval in a corporate hierarchy, or worrying about playing to a large market, the Four Corners team can try stuff for fun.

“This becomes a means of self-expression,” Esquivel says. “We get to do more of that with a lot more of freedom. Having the band back together, thinking of stuff, saying ‘we should do it,’ and doing it with a lot more speed.”

There’s never been a physical barrier to that kind of experimentation. Four Corners’ brewery site—Esquivel calls it a “campus”—has plenty of room in its two buildings. The larger one, closed to the public, is the big production brewery that makes your at-home six pack of El Grito lager. The smaller building houses the taproom, an events space, and, right behind the taproom bar, a smaller brewhouse where the team tries its more eccentric ideas. Gesturing at it during our conversation, Esquivel says, “I’d say there’s 50-plus beers that come out of here during a year. There’s a lot of R&D that we’re doing there, and I think it’s become a little more intentional.”

The public bar’s 20 taps are often made up of about half core Four Corners classics (Chingón IPA, Local Buzz, and the gang) and about half newcomers and seasonal rotators. With the ability to make a quick batch, throw it on tap, and see how the public reacts, Four Corners is better able to measure the success of different varieties of IPA, or new lighter spritzes and fruity beers, which are more popular among younger customers.

Oh, yeah, and over to the right of the bar is the beer-to-go fridge. That’s new, too. You can grab a variety pack, seasonal releases (with snazzy white labels), or the Four Corners classics.

For Dallasites, the other big change at the taproom will be the return of Four Corners’ events. “I’m wearing my Día de los Puercos shirt right now,” Esquivel says, unzipping his fleece to prove it. “We’ll bring back Taco Cons, that sort of stuff.” After our formal interview ends, we start debating more ideas to get regulars out on the taproom’s patio.

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Being part of a bigger corporation wasn’t all bad news for Four Corners. Far from it: Constellation helped the brewery invest in more production capacity and what Esquivel calls “some kick-ass packaging equipment.” (Speaking of packaging: no, the cans with 360-degree tops are not coming back. The metal manufacturer stopped making them, and even if they did make them again, Four Corners received some defective cans that blew up.)

Constellation pushed the brewery to expand to other markets with a large Latino customer base, including Los Angeles, an effort that failed during the pandemic but left capacity to spare. And, although Constellation reps used to handle distribution, they left Four Corners with a healthy network of clients and a whole lot of shelf space. Chingón wasn’t on my neighborhood grocery’s shelves until the first sale—and after the sale back, it’s still there.

“The great news is, our distributors were really excited that we have the team back and we were focused,” says Matt Waller, one of the brewery’s partners. “We know that we’re a Texas-based company and that’s where we’re going to focus on growing. And that’s enough.” Waller adds that the brewery’s goal is to climb into Texas’ top 10 craft breweries by sales, maybe eventually the top five, and carry its identity across the state. But Texas is enough now. Gone forever are Constellation’s efforts to transplant the brand elsewhere.

“I don’t see us going beyond our border anytime soon,” Esquivel says. “There’s plenty of Texas to go.”

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