Historically, Hollywood has given the Lone Star the one-dimensional treatment.
“The movies have made us look hot, flat and dusty for over 50 years, but our story could not be more different,” says Janice Langlinais, spokesperson for Texas Tourism. It’s truly time to cast aside old notions about America’s second-largest state and embrace its surprises, both old and new.”
Texas’s own film industry, by the way, ranks just behind California and New York.
Flat and dusty? America’s second-largest state has miles of far-reaching plains, yes, but also pine forests, quaint burgs, laid-back beach communities, and grand canyons.
“Texas,” Langlinais says, “has the entire U.S. topography in one.”
The state’s remarkable size—261,797 square miles—is matched by its history and spirit of independence. Originally a territory of Spain and then Mexico, Texas rebelliously became its own nation in 1836 before joining the U.S. in 1845; having flown under six different flags, Texans have a fierce attitude of hard-won pride.
Beyond the cowboys and sagebrush, this vast landscape has unexpected discoveries at every turn. Some parts look like the moon, others, the South Pacific. Wine-lovers rejoice; Texas is America’s fifth-largest producer. There are historic windmills in the west, dolphins off South Padre Island, Cadillacs (and VW Bugs) half-buried in Amarillo, and towns with glorious names like Cut and Shoot, Elysian Fields and Oatmeal.
And perhaps most significantly, the argument grows stronger by the day for Texas’s place among the world’s cultural and artistic elite.
When planners create programs that incorporate the diversity of Texas, meetings and events in this vast Southern land are anything but ordinary.
Culture Club
The heavily urbanized North Texas Metroplex has plenty going for it. Anchored by Dallas and Fort Worth, and surrounded by a number of growing communities, the area, known as Silicon Prairie for its technology base, has a heavy concentration of Fortune 500 companies and is home to roughly one-quarter of all Texans. And it just happens to be the state’s top visitor draw.
The big news, though, is art: If Texas was once the place where you drew a six-shooter to settle a score, Dallas today is the place where drawing—and painting, sculpting, photographing, and designing—win the day.
A forest of construction cranes tells the story of a very different Dallas in the making.
“We are under way with close to $13 billion in core urban development, which is literally transforming the city,” says Phillip Jones, president and CEO of the Dallas CVB.
Nowhere is the change more tangible and attractive than in the city’s ascendant cultural scene. Visitors can choose from more than 160 museums, galleries and attractions, with more than 115 pieces of public art throughout town.
The Dallas Museum of Art recently received an unprecedented bequest encompassing 800 major works, while the instant-classic Nasher Sculpture Center, opened in 2003, holds one of the world’s foremost collections of 20th century sculpture, and the acoustics at the I.M. Pei-designed Meyerson Symphony Center are pitch-perfect.
There is also artistry in Dallas’s fast-rising culinary scene, the 66-acre lakeside Dallas Arboretum is floral splendor defined, and new opera and ballet venues are slated for 2009 openings.
“Dallas stands apart culturally, and is fast becoming a world art destination,” Jones says.
To appreciate the overall scope of change, “Big D” was in a development slump from the late 1980s until around 2005. No longer—today’s construction boom is exemplified by master-planned projects like the $3 billion-plus Victory Park, 75 acres of reclaimed land in the city’s heart featuring an innovative mix of office space, hotels, entertainment venues, and residential towers. The project’s open-air Victory Plaza will have 11 movable LED screens and gathering space for 10,000 people.
Billed as the largest urban park in the U.S., the Trinity River Project will create a riverside complex of recreational facilities, including three bridges from famed architect Santiago Calatrava.
“The new sense of vibrancy, along with a booming job market, is bringing residents back to a long-vacant downtown and talent from around the world,” Jones says. “These are exciting times for Dallas—and the Super Bowl is coming in 2011.”
Fort Worth, west of Dallas, is also a major economic center and art destination. One clue to the city’s personality lies in its eclectic nicknames, including “Funky Town” and the “Paris of the Plains.” Classic Old West attractions, including the Stockyards National Historic District and honky-tonk mecca Billy Bob’s Texas, the world’s largest country and western music venue, are matched by outstanding art and architecture. Dallas, in fact, once stood in the city’s artistic shadow.
Founded in 1892, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth is Texas’s oldest art museum, while the Kimbell Art Museum is among the world’s finest small art museums. The National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame uniquely honors the women of the American West, and the American Airlines C.R. Smith Museum is dedicated solely to commercial aviation. Meanwhile, film buffs will recognize the beautifully landscaped Fort Worth Water Gardens from the finale of the 1970 sci-fi classic Logan’s Run.
Rounding out the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex’s appeal is a collection of growing suburbs, including Grapevine, Arlington, Mesquite, Irving, Plano, and Frisco, each offering unique and oftentimes unexpected attractions that attendees can enjoy.
The Texas Wine and Grape Growers Association is based in historic Grapevine, featuring the nine-winery Grapevine Wine Trail, and downtown Grapevine is transformed each winter into the “Christmas Capital of Texas.”
Arlington is the new home of the Dallas Cowboys, who will move into the new Arlington Stadium in 2009, the site of the 2011 Super Bowl. Promoted as “Fun Central,” Arlington also entertains groups with Six Flags Over Texas and Ameriquest Field, home of Major League Baseball’s Texas Rangers. Both venues double as unique off-site options.
Irving may be losing the Cowboys to Arlington, but it still boasts the Irving Arts Center; the Official Museum of the Boy Scouts of America; the world’s largest equestrian sculpture, the stunning bronze Mustangs of Las Colinas; and Las Colinas Polo Club, hosting tournaments and corporate events. Premier golf courses are another draw, including the TPC at Las Colinas, home of the PGA’s annual Byron Nelson Championship.
Frisco, a former railroad whistle-stop town, is home to Pizza Hut Park, the first large-scale soccer facility in the U.S., in addition to the country’s largest private collection of contemporary outdoor sculpture.
Just northeast of Frisco in the town of McKinney is the McKinney Performing Arts Center, housed in a 19th century courthouse.
Mesquite, best known for its rodeo (see sidebar, page 33), also features the Texas Queen, a double-decker paddle wheeler that is available for group excursions and events.
In the corporation-rich community of Plano is Southfork Ranch, once the fictional home of the Ewings from TV’s Dallas and now an award-winning event and conference facility hosting more than 1,400 gatherings annually.
Happenin’ Houston
What is Dallas’s intra-state rival Houston doing to distinguish itself?
“Houston itself is unexpected,” declares Lindsey Brown, director of marketing for the Greater Houston CVB. “People who come here expecting stereotypical Texas are surprised to discover a thriving metropolis. The Johnson Space Center is a Texas classic, of course, but the closest ranch is 45 minutes away.”
And people are certainly coming to Houston. Just under 1 million delegates attended 309 events and shows in Houston last year, and each year, seven times that many people visit the city’s heralded Museum District.
Brown says the Museum of Natural Science, one of 18 museums in the district, ranks only behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., in U.S. attendance.
“The story is not in the size of our museum lineup,” she says, “but in the caliber of the art.”
Houston’s museum collection (with free admission at 11 institutions) also includes the important 20th century Menil Collection, the Museum of Fine Arts and the remarkable Byzantine Fresco Chapel, housing the only intact Byzantine frescoes in the Western Hemisphere.
Houston also has America’s second-largest theater district, an opera regarded for its innovation and grand venues like the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts, offering skyline views from its floor-to-ceiling windows.
“We own the arts in Texas,” Brown says, confirming the same confident opinion of Texas Monthly’s readers in a 2006 survey.
The city sets a high bar for meetings with a difference, too. The Holocaust Museum offers corporate diversity training programs. Groups can canoe and kayak in downtown Houston along stretches of the Buffalo Bayou waterway, while world-class trainers from the Houstonian Hotel conduct team-building adventure exercises in downtown’s Memorial Park.
And in a true instance of innovation, the CVB, together with Houston-based meeting planners The Sullivan Group, conceptualized and staged an outdoor party for 1,600 delegates in the heart of the city, pulling in industry sponsorships from the likes of Starwood Hotels and the CVBs of Las Vegas, San Diego and Albuquerque.
After an awards ceremony at the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts, the client, Arizona-based meeting services provider HelmsBriscoe, moved outside to Texas Street, a major downtown thoroughfare with restaurants and bars that was reserved exclusively for its “Aftermath” party.
“We had an hour-and-a-half to set up the party, and everything went off without a hitch,” says Clare Jackson, president of The Sullivan Group.
Describing the event as “the company’s best meeting ever” (see Planner’s Perspective, page 28), Peter Shelly, executive vice president of HelmsBriscoe, praised the CVB for its “creative and cohesive work, including being ready with tents and 2,000 umbrellas in case of rain. It was a complete success—we are still getting thank-you cards.”
The Hills Are Alive
Music- and movie-lovers say their blessings in the state capital of Austin, where a singer serenades arrivals at the airport. Known as the “Live Music Capital of the World” and the “Third Coast” for its prodigious film industry, Austin, home to nearly 200 live-music venues, has a formidable reputation for creativity.
The city has another identity—as a beautiful green oasis in the heart of Texas and as a gateway to Texas Hill Country, where today’s visitors discover what early European settlers encountered long ago: a veritable Eden of limestone canyons, green valleys and crystal-clear waters.
Linda Atkins, director of convention services at the Austin CVB, hears it all the time from newcomers: “I had no idea that Austin looked like this.” The uninitiated, as she explains, are referring to the city’s extensive network of greenbelts, parks and natural preserves, blessed by an annual average of 230 days of sunshine.
“Austin is also the gateway to seven lakes stepping their way 100 miles into Hill Country, so you have numerous water-based recreation options,” Atkins says.
As befits the hometown of Lance Armstrong, Austin is also known as “Fit City.”
In downtown’s popular Zilker Park, which features a miniature railway, botanical garden and acres of playing fields, the star attraction is the giant spring-fed Barton Springs Pool, always at 68 degrees.
Another crowd-pleaser is the nighttime exodus of 1.5 million hungry bats streaming out from under Congress Avenue Bridge.
Austin is also in top shape culturally, one of only a few U.S. cities with professional ballet, symphony, opera, and theater companies. Meanwhile, the Austin Museum of Art has two locations, including the restored 1916 Italianate villa at Laguna Gloria, a superb event location, and outstanding cultural resources are available on the Texas University campus, including the incomparable archive at the Harry Ransom Center, featuring the Gutenberg Bible and the world’s first photograph.
For groups wanting a true taste of Texas, Atkins recommends Star Hill Ranch, a faithfully recreated Western town.
“Groups can take over the property and party in an Old West street,” Atkins says.
If that block-party-style event sounds like Houston, well, Austin is thinking along the same lines. Atkins says the CVB is working on developing the street party concept in the city’s popular Warehouse, Sixth Street and SoCo entertainment districts. (Two insider tips: Cisco’s on Sixth Street for breakfast, and in nearby Lockhart, Kreuz Market for sensational barbecue.)
Hill Country, a paradise of wineries, wildflowers and quaint burgs, is perfect for weekend getaways, while a handful of upscale meetings-ready resorts complete with spas, golf courses and other relaxing amenities, makes it easy for groups to mix business with pleasure.
Hill Country’s charming Fredericksburg is being called the next California Wine Country, while generations of Texas college students have flocked to New Braunfels for mass consumption of sausage and beer at its annual Wurst Fest.
Founded in 1845 by German immigrants, the riverside town of New Braunfels is also home to the 65-acre Schlitterbahn Waterpark Resort, a top 10 Texas attraction. According to New Braunfels CVB Director Judy Young, a new meeting facility will open in 2008. In the meantime, groups can break out in historic Gruene Hall, Texas’s oldest continuously operating music hall, or celebrate next door at the Gristmill Restaurant, housed in a circa-1878 boiler house.
Mission Statement
San Antonio, Texas’s second-largest city, draws more than 20 million people each year with shopping, theme parks and the state’s two top attractions: Paseo del Rio. or River Walk—the celebrated pedestrian esplanade—and the Alamo, scene of the heroic 1836 stand against the Mexican army in Texas’s battle for independence.
Beyond the popular trappings, though, “Alamo City” has an important story to tell in history, culture and art.
San Antonio crowns the South Texas Plains, once the province of conquistadors and Spanish missionaries. Of the 38 U.S. missions established by Franciscan friars in the 1700s, five were in San Antonio. The Alamo stands apart in downtown; the other four are in San Antonio Missions National Historic Park. Stunningly preserved, these adobe and stone structures are linked by a 12-mile path along the San Antonio River.
Another surprise is the nearby, often overlooked Southtown neighborhood, home to the Victorian, Italianate and Beaux Arts mansions of the King William Historic District and a funky art scene.
The city has a long cultural tradition, reflected in several unique institutions and landmarks.
Currently undergoing a $50 million renovation, the McNay Art Museum, founded five decades ago, was the first modern art museum in Texas.
Built in 1926, the exotic-themed Aztec Theater is the only such surviving movie palace in Texas. Now based on the River Walk as Aztec on the River, its restored highlights include a two-ton chandelier and a “Mighty Wurlitzer” organ.
The historic landmark Majestic Theater, once a vaudeville movie palace and home to the San Antonio symphony, is no less extravagant.
Founded in 1949, the Alameda National Center for Latino Arts and Culture (Museo Alameda) is America’s largest Latino museum, while a recent addition has transformed the San Antonio Museum of Art (SAMA) into the largest center for Asian art in the Southern U.S.
North of downtown alongside the San Antonio River, the historic Pearl Brewery complex is also undergoing a transformation, creating a unique urban residential, dining and commercial mix. The Culinary Institute of America’s new Latin American program, the Center for Foods of the Americas, is here, along with the restored 19th century Pearl Stable, once the grand home of the brewery’s draft horses and today an elegant event venue.
Southeast of San Antonio, Panna Maria is the country’s oldest Polish settlement, its church bearing a cross carried to Texas from Poland.
Down South
The heritage story continues all the way to the Mexican border.
“This is an historic territory with modern attitude,” says Patricia Taylor, director of the Laredo CVB, describing a town founded in 1755 that has flown under seven different flags.
The nation’s busiest inland port and connected to Mexico by four international bridges, Laredo is home to treasures like the Republic of the Rio Grande Museum, the circa-1718 San Agustin Cathedral and the Victorian-era St. Peter’s district.
Fans of rare birds find nirvana at the Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park’s 10,000-acre World Birding Center.
Continuing south, McAllen, the “City of Palms,” could easily be in the South Pacific, with parakeets, parrots and palm trees filling its streets. Square dancing draws thousands in the winter, dinosaur prints make a big impression at the International Museum of Art and Science, and groups have a new home in the 175,000-square-foot McAllen Convention Center.
To the east lies Harlingen, the Rio Grande Valley’s commercial and transportation hub and home of great Mexican food and antiques, followed by the state’s southernmost city of Brownsville, known for the “Two Nation Vacation.”
Situated just across from Matamoras, Mexico, Brownsville is a semi-tropical white-sand destination, where bougainvilleas, exotic birds and Gulf breezes lure so-called “Winter Texans”—snowbirds who migrate from Canada and the Midwestern U.S.
Eastern Eden
Small-market groups, reunions and nature buffs have an unexpected Eden in the off-the-beaten-path Piney Woods region in eastern Texas, site of Big Thicket National Preserve and Caddo Lake, the state’s only natural lake.
Directly underneath Piney Woods are the Texas Gulf Coast’s northernmost destinations.
With bayou roots from early French and Spanish explorers, Beaumont is home to the Spindletop-Gladys City Boomtown Museum, commemorating the 1901 gusher that birthed the Texas oil industry, and the Texas Energy Museum.
The Louisiana theme continues in Galveston Island, where gingerbread-trimmed houses, towering palm trees and one of the biggest Mardi Gras parties outside of New Orleans draw huge crowds. Top attractions include the Grand 1894 Opera House, designated the state’s official opera facility, and the superlative Moody Gardens nature complex, which includes the 10-story glass Rainforest Pyramid.
Nearby Port Arthur, birthplace of music legends including Janis Joplin and the Big Bopper, is the site of the Texas Music Hall of Fame.
Farther south, Corpus Christi entertains groups with windswept beaches, close-up dolphin viewing at the Texas State Aquarium, and tours and private events at the USS Lexington, one of the U.S. Navy’s most-decorated aircraft carriers.
Nearby Rockport-Fulton is a picturesque beachfront community with a great artistic tradition memorialized at the Rockport Center for the Arts.
At the southernmost end of the Texas Gulf Coast is South Padre Island, which comes as a sun-drenched surprise to many visitors.
“The beauty for us,” says Dan Quandt, executive director of the South Padre Island CVB, “is that the average person may come to Texas not realizing that there are beaches.”
There is no shortage of sand in South Padre Island, a popular Gulf-facing getaway east of Brownsville, where groups can bond while building sandcastles, walk nature trails, visit Texas’s only public-accessible lighthouse at Port Isabel, and see bounty from centuries-old shipwrecks at the Treasures of the Gulf Museum.
Go West
For a true appreciation of Texas’s diversity, head west from the waterside Gulf region into the central and western stretches of the Lone Star State.
In the Panhandle city of Amarillo, the biggest surprise, says Eric Miller, spokesperson for the Amarillo Convention and Visitor Council, is Palo Duro Canyon State Park, also known as the “Grand Canyon of Texas.”
“After driving across 20 miles of flat, high plains, people arrive at Palo Duro and cannot believe their eyes,” Miller says. “Groups can rent small cabins on the canyon’s rim, which is spectacular in itself.”
Referred to as the “Smithsonian with an accent,” the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum in the nearby town of Canyon is the state’s largest history museum, while Amarillo’s recently opened Globe-News Center for the Performing Arts stages ballet, opera and symphony.
The 72-ounce steak at the famous Big Texan Steak Ranch is free if you can eat it—fixings and all—in an hour, and visitors are welcome to spray paint the “bumper crop” of Caddys half-buried in a field outside of town at the iconic Cadillac Ranch.
Directly south of Amarillo is Lubbock, birthplace of music legend Buddy Holly. He is honored with a permanent exhibit at the facility bearing his name, which also features the Texas Musicians Hall of Fame. The indigenous prairie dog is celebrated at a new local exhibit, and the early days of ranching are remembered at the National Ranching Heritage Center. Wineries, several available for group tastings and events, are also abundant in the Lubbock area, and while modern turbines harness the great winds that sweep across area plains, historic windmills are reminiscent of similar ingenuity from the past.
To the east, Wichita Falls, in addition to having a thriving arts scene, is the setting for the annual Hotter ’n Hell Hundred, a 100-mile bike ride in 100-plus-degree temperatures, while to the southeast, the Texas frontier spirit and cowboy culture live on in Abilene.
Texas is justifiably proud of its powerful military tradition, and Midland, located southwest of Abilene, is home to the American Airpower Heritage Museum and headquarters of the Commemorative Air Force, WWII warbird meccas featuring interactive exhibits, the only flying B-29 and the world’s premier collection of aviation nose art.
Football is huge in Texas, too, and nearby Odessa’s Permian High Panthers high school team is the subject of the film Friday Night Lights. The town’s other monster-size hit is Odessa Meteor Crater.
Art shows up in the unlikeliest places in Texas. In West Texas’s Big Bend Country—the living portrait of the old cowboy West—quirky towns like Marathon, Terlingua and the hip mecca of Marfa draw collectors from New York and beyond in search of one-of-a-kind pieces. Marfa’s Paisano Hotel was headquarters for the making of the 1956 film Giant. Look, too, for the ghostly, unexplained “Marfa Lights.”
Big Bend National Park is a masterpiece in its own right, its huge canyons and massive cliffs encompassing the state’s entire southwestern tip, while in Fort Davis, residents still ride horses, and “star parties” at the McDonald Observatory are hugely popular.
On the Rio Grande across from Juarez, Mexico, the region’s major city of El Paso is a heady mix of Spanish, Mexican, American, and Native American cultures. The historic Mission Trail tours churches dating back to the 1600s, while the El Paso Museum of Art’s collection of more than 5,000 works includes European art from the 13th century. A true El Paso treat is the view of the Chihuahuan Desert mountain range.
As Texas Tourism’s slogan attests, Texas is truly “A Whole Other Country,” and from the big cities to the small hamlets and beyond, there’s a surprising side for groups to discover.
For More Info
Abilene CVB 325.676.2556
www.abilenevisitors.com
Amarillo Convention and Visitor Council 843.853.8000
www.visitamarillotx.com
Arlington CVB 817.265.7721
www.arlington.org
Austin CVB 512.474.5171
www.austintexas.org
Bay Area Houston CVB 281.338.0333
www.visitbayareahouston.com
Beaumont CVB 409.880.3749
www.beaumontcvb.com
Brownsville CVB 956.546.3721
www.brownsville.org
Corpus Christi CVB 361.881.1888
www.corpuschristicvb.com
Dallas CVB 214.571.1000
www.visitdallas.com
El Paso CVB 915.534.0601
www.visitelpaso.com
Fort Worth CVB 817.336.8791
www.fortworth.com
Fredericksburg CVB 830.997.6523
www.fredericksburg-texas.com
Frisco CVB 972.963.9225
www.visitfrisco.com
Galveston Island CVB 409.797.5100
www.galveston.com
Grapevine CVB 817.410.3185
www.grapevinetexasusa.com
Greater Houston CVB 956.795.2200
www.visithoustontexas.com
Harlingen Area COC 843.853.8000
www.harlingen.com
Irving CVB 972.252.7476
www.irvingtexas.com
Lake Conroe Area CVB 936.538.7112
www.lakeconroecvb.org
Laredo CVB 956.795.2200
www.visitlaredo.com
League City Convention and Visitors Corp. 281.338.7339
www.visitleaguecity.com
Lubbock CVB 806.747.5232
www.visitlubbock.org
McAllen CVB 956.682.2871
www.mcallencvb.com
Mesquite COC 972.285.0211
www.mesquitechamber.com
Midland CVB 432.683.3381
www.visitmidlandtx.com
Odessa CVB 432.333.7871
www.odessacvb.com
Plano CVB 972.422.0296
www.planocvb.com
Port Arthur CVB 409.985.7822
www.portarthurtexas.com
Rockport–Fulton Area COC 361.729.6445
www.rockport-fulton.org
San Antonio CVB 210.207.6700
www.sanantoniocvb.com
South Padre Island CVB 956.761.3005
www.sopadre.com
Texas Tourism 800.888.8839
www.traveltex.com
Washington County CVB 979.836.3695
www.brenhamtexas.com
Wichita Falls CVB 940.716.5500
www.wichitafalls.org
The Woodlands CVB 281.363.2447
www.town-center.com
