A city builds its own vibe one block, one business and one experience at a time.
Will the real Pflugerville please stand up?
Let’s pface it: The pfirst way Pflugerville gets our attention is with its unique name. But that name isn’t unique to the city proper.
The Venn diagram of Pflugervilles in the booming Austin-Round Rock-Pflugerville metro area — including the six-city Pflugerville Independent School District (ISD), a postal zip code that reaches beyond the city into Austin and unincorporated Travis County, and the Pflugerville ESD (emergency services district) — could leave one feeling a bit pflustered.
Then again, you know it when you see it. Literally.
“The city made it easy by putting the city’s ‘PF’ in front of all the street signs in Pflugerville,” says Jerry W. Jones Jr., the executive director of Pflugerville Community Development Corp. (PCDC). “If your street sign has that symbol, you are in Pflugerville. If you don’t have one and want to annex, we are happy to introduce you to the appropriate contacts in city hall.”
The recent Venture Pfest saw plenty of introductions among experienced entrepreneurs and prospective founders looking to take their next steps. Jones calls Venture Pfest one of the clearest expressions of the city’s spirit of welcome. “A welcoming community is not just one that invites you in,” he says. “It is one that helps you see a future for yourself there.”
Darelle White, board president of PCDC, says the event was “real world. The things that were shared you could actually put to use, and they were based on first-hand experience.”
The experience came from individuals like Ricardo Alger, founder of Armadillo Automation & AI; Kristyn Emerson, regional director for Crux Climbing Center (now with a Pflugerville location); David Neff, an IBM Salesforce marketing cloud consultant who’s also the founder of Pepper Dave’s Hot Sauce; and Tara Godby, a philanthropist and certified life coach with 30 years of corporate leadership experience who today is CEO of Teakeasy Tea, a music-inspired luxury tea shop she co-founded with her husband Duane.
“What stood out most was how much we support each other,” Godby says of Venture Pfest. “Nobody was putting on a show. People shared resources freely and genuinely wanted to see each other succeed. That kind of openness is rare, and it says a lot about the business community in Pflugerville.”
Special Places Form New Texas Nexus
If an event can capture a community’s essence, where are the places that do the same? For Jones, Lake Pflugerville and Pfluger Park embody the Pflugerville spirit. “They offer settings for the everyday connections that make a city feel like a community,” he says. “To me, those shared spaces are as important to our identity as the businesses and developments we attract.”
That diversified business growth includes continuing attraction of investments in such sectors as additive manufacturing, robotics and the semiconductor supply chain, in addition to life sciences, tech, professional services, back office and headquarters. But supporting existing businesses, helping entrepreneurs grow, and pursuing restaurants, retail, and gathering places are also essential parts of building a more complete community.
The list of special places soon will include Project Nexus, a 53‑acre mixed‑use development site west of Lake Pflugerville managed by PCDC, which acquired the land in early 2025, followed by an $18.2 million bond approval and the selection of Jones Lang LaSalle as the owner’s representative and master planning firm.
“We envision this site becoming a vibrant hub, attracting new retail, restaurants, office spaces and high-quality professional job centers,” said Jones year when the organization released an RFQ for an owner’s rep, which turned out to be JLL. After a visioning process with PCDC, JLL in March 2026 updated the PCDC Board on the site’s potential. In addition to funding, stakeholder alignment and walkability, JLL highlighted one key priority: finding the right educational or institutional anchor partners. Those partners will find good company in the array of regional institutions that already support the Silicon Hills talent pipeline, from The University of Texas at Austin and Texas State University to Austin Community College, private institutions such as Southwestern University and Huston-Tillotson University, and the STEM-forward Pflugerville ISD with its dual-credit pathways and 94% graduation rate.
“Pflugerville should be a place where you do not have to choose between a sense of belonging and the opportunity to build something bigger for yourself. We want people to find both here.”
— Jerry W. Jones Jr., Executive Director, Pflugerville Community Development Corp.
“For me, the opportunity is larger than filling a site with buildings,” Jones says. “I want Nexus to be a place residents can enjoy on an ordinary evening. Nexus should not feel like a development that could have been dropped into any city. It should feel like Pflugerville, with the quality and ambition our community deserves.”
You might say quality and ambition also characterize the space occupied by Teakeasy Tea, where the Godbys express their affection by naming one of their signature teas for the city’s Pecan Street, flavoring it with apple pieces, cocoa nibs, cinnamon, dark chocolate chips and marigold flowers.
“We’ve received a tremendous amount of support from our neighbors, the surrounding areas and the city,” Tara Godby says. “The Pflugerville Community Development Corporation has been an incredible partner and has committed to supporting us for the long term … We want to grow right here. Pflugerville is where we live, play and build, and we can’t imagine being anywhere else.”
Darelle White locates the real Pflugerville in yet another special place: the future. “What is tomorrow going to look like?” he wonders. “Because we want to get there before anybody else.”
Jones says that forward-thinking optimism and sense of anticipation are at the heart of PCDC’s work.
“Our responsibility is to help shape that tomorrow and make it meaningful for the people we serve,” he says. “Tomorrow should mean more opportunity for the people who already call Pflugerville home, and more reasons for others to choose it.”
This Investment Profile was prepared under the auspices of the Pflugerville Community Development Corporation. For more information, visit www.pfdevelopment.com.
