It’s all hooves on deck when it comes time to secure money to buy the nearly 300 champion animals raised and shown by youth exhibitors at the annual Fort Worth Stock Show & Rodeo.

Nonprofit groups, led by the Fort Worth Stock Show Syndicate, raised a record $8.2 million last year to toe the line and buy the 288 champion steers, pigs, goats and lambs sold at the Junior Sale of Champions on the show’s last day.

Those four shows and auction finale are the heart of the stock show. The groups, which seek commitments through the morning of the sale to ensure the last animal sold brings a premium, want to beat last year’s numbers heading into this year’s sale, set for Feb. 8 at Watt Arena.

“It’s a celebration of Fort Worth tradition, but it’s also work that helps secure the future of Texas agriculture,” said Christian Schroder, a Fort Worth lawyer, vice president of GM Financial and chairman of the Syndicate, which raises more than 90% of the winning bids at the sale.

“Our mission is to make sure we’re rewarding these 4-H and FFA kids with above-market prices,” Schroder said in an interview. “It takes a whole lot of money just for them to break even. And that doesn’t count all the time they spend.”

In 2024, the Higginbotham insurance and employee benefits company, via the Syndicate, put in the winning bid of $340,000 for the grand champion steer. Besides the Syndicate, Women Steering Business, Tallest Hog at the Trough, the U Ol’ Goat Committee and Ladies on the Lamb are the other volunteer-led groups. The Report discussed this year’s fundraising with the groups for this story, but was unable to reach a representative of the goat committee.

The annual goal of Women Steering Business is to secure commitments between $250,000 and $300,000 ahead of the Junior Sale of Champions. As of Feb. 3, the group, which raises money by selling memberships between $1,000 and $100,000, had surpassed its goal, said Becky Renfro Borbolla, who co-founded the group in 2013 to focus on buying steers from young women who are exhibiting them. To date, the group estimates it’s spent $2.8 million at the auction.

“We still have money coming in” for 2025, she said. “I don’t know where we are this year. I know we’re over the $250,000 (mark). Are we going to be at $300,000 or more?”

The group, which also withholds $20,000 annually to buy animals at a Tarrant County sale, has secured 125 members as of Monday — a “normal” level, Renfro Borbolla said.

Depending on results of Friday’s steer show, Women Steering Business may go into overdrive collecting late commitments.

Part of Women Steering Business’s appeal: no fundraising requirements for members. “You just write a check,” Renfro Borbolla, senior vice president of Renfro Foods in Fort Worth, said.

The group is also seeking contributions for its Grand Fund, which Women Steering Business set up in April last year and now has $145,000. The fund is designed to provide extra money if the group needs it in a given year. In 2023, for one, Women Steering Business was in on the grand champion steer, exhibited by a young woman. Women Steering Business’s highest bid of $430,000 was overtaken by Higginbotham’s winning $440,000.

“We want to support as many young ladies as we can,” Renfro Borbolla said.

Last week, Tallest Hog at the Trough boosters were working on guaranteeing commitments to buy the 12 champion pigs.

“It’s looking good,” Gary Ray, a Fort Worth insurance man, past Syndicate chairman and co-founder of hog group with Fort Worth Realtor Bobby Norris, said.

Last year, buyers snapped up the 12 pigs in the auction for $385,000. Ray said his group’s goals are at least $75,000 for the grand champion and $45,000-$50,000 for the reserve champion. Standard Meat Co. of Fort Worth and Syracuse Sausage of Ponder are regular buyers of the top hogs.

“We’re hoping to do at least $425,000 this year,” Ray said.

As of last week, Ladies on the Lamb had added five members for this year, raising the total number to 35 active and 10 sustainers, Kim Johnson, president, said.

The group estimates it’s spent close to $2.4 million over 25 years to buy lambs. The sale will have 10 champion lambs.

“So far this year, everything’s going really great from the fundraising perspective,” Johnson said. “We’re on task right now and actually set to exceed our goal.”

The Syndicate helps run the auction table and track lot buyers. “Then we go out and collect the money,” Schroder said.

The Syndicate organized in 1980 “because these kids were not getting appropriate pricing” at the auction, Schroder said. That year, the show raised $17,000 at the auction. The Syndicate has since established a scholarship fund and today gives $240,000 in scholarships to a total 24 FFA and 4-H students at $10,000 apiece.

Average price for a steer during the 2024 show was $17,000 or $18,000, Schroder said. But Lot 288, the last animal sold, brought $75,000.

“When the kids bring their animals, we believe they bring their best animals here,” Schroder said. “When they do that, they’re rewarded appropriately.”

Scott Nishimura is a senior editor for the Documenters program at the Fort Worth Report. Reach him at [email protected].

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Johntay Cook, who departed the Texas Longhorns for the NCAA Transfer Portal during the college football regular season, was arrested in Fort Worth last night on property theft and interference of public duties charges, multiple outlets report. Cook is currently the top-ranked portal prospect in the 247Sports’ Transfer Rankings. The Desoto, Texas, product joined Texas as one of the top-ranked members of the 2023 recruiting prospect class.

Former 5-star WR, Texas transfer Johntay Cook arrested in Fort Worth on multiple charges...Details: https://t.co/a7wuistbyj pic.twitter.com/6Kfb1u6dXR

— On3 (@On3sports) February 4, 2025

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Tim Campbell, a @TexasFootball all-SWC defensive lineman and the younger brother of Earl Campbell and twin brother of Steve Campbell, passed away Sunday, Feb. 2. Campbell is 2nd in program history with 39.5 career sacks. Our condolences go out to the entire Campbell family pic.twitter.com/Ri3Y4mRGEd

— T-Association (@txtassociation) February 4, 2025

Google signed for space at the massive Northlake 35 Logistics Park developed by Falcon Commercial Development and Clarion Partners in Denton County.

DALLAS — This story was originally published by our content partners at the Dallas Business Journal. Read the original version here.

Technology giant Google LLC has backed out of a more than 1-million-square-foot space it leased last year at an industrial park north of Fort Worth.

Google signed for space at the massive Northlake 35 Logistics Park developed by Falcon Commercial Development and Clarion Partners in Denton County to support its data center operations. The lease in the small city of Northlake came as the company outlined plans to invest $1 billion in data centers and cloud center infrastructure in Texas.

Nathan Lawrence, a broker at KBC Advisors who leases the property, told Dallas Business Journal the building is now back on the market and fully built out.

"The space is vacant and available now," Lawrence wrote in an email. "All I have heard is that there was excess capacity."

CoStar News reported that California-based Google never moved into the space, adding that the company spent millions of dollars outfitting the space. A May 2024 state filing for the project, under the name "Project Beast," gave an estimated $20.2 million cost.

Falcon Commercial, Google and Clarion Partners did not respond to request for comment.

Google still has extensive data operations in North Texas. It has a data centers in Midlothian and Red Oak, south of Dallas. The subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOGL) also signed a lease in October for a 1.1-million-square-foot of space in west Fort Worth for data and cloud infrastructure support. The facility is within the 520-acre Majestic Silver Creek Business Park, at Silver Creek Road directly west of Loop 820.

Cody Gibbs, director of market analytics for CoStar, told DBJ both buildings are similar from an operational standpoint, with the same amount of docks and 40-foot ceiling heights.

"Even from a geographic perspective, the two sites are around 55 miles from Google’s Red Oak campus," Gibbs wrote in an email.

The new vacancy at Northlake 35 Logistics Park adds to a glut of vacant million-square-foot spaces in the region. These available spaces now total about 7 million square feet, and all have been constructed in the past three years, Gibbs said. Of the 31.2 million square feet worth of space in this size range delivered since 2022, more than 30% is still on the market, according to the CoStar researcher.

Chef Stephan Pyles’ unmistakable Texas cuisine has a new home, and this one is an easier drive from Fort Worth.

The Seeker, serving Pyles’ familiar honey-fried chicken, steaks and lobster tamale pie, is open inside the Interstate Inn, a restored 1960s-era motor hotel in Stephenville

It’s an hour’s drive away — take Interstate 20 west and U.S. 281 south to 809 East Road — but the stress level and free parking make it a far better trip for Fort Worth diners than Pyles’ landmark Dallas restaurants of the past 40 years such as Baby Routh, Star Canyon and Stampede 66.

The Seeker is a charming fit inside the Interstate Inn, built in the 1960s as a Caravan Interstate Inn and restored to its roadside-Americana glory as a destination hotel and attraction in the “Cowboy Capital of the World.”

Pyles is circling back to his childhood in a Big Spring truck stop.

“I never thought I’d be here, but with everything that’s happening in Stephenville, it’s an exciting place to be,” he said recently.

The hotel decor plays off its 1960s past. It opened as the Caravan Interstate Inn, an optimistic name since no interstate highway goes to Stephenville.

But the Seeker’s decor is more Western, like Pyles’ contemporary Texas restaurants of years past.

The menu features a bone-in rib-eye with red chile onion rings and a bean-mushroom ragout, an example of Pyles’ updated Texas cooking.

There’s a coriander-cured tenderloin with a potato pancake or a short rib with tongue-in-cheek-named “Ol’ Redneck” cheddar mac-and-cheese.

The sides are both distinctive — squash bisque, an esquites-crab salad, a pork-belly huarache de nixtamal with apple-mint chutney — and familiar — green beans, tots and buttermilk biscuits.

“There’s some pretty standard things, but in the style of the other restaurants,” Pyles said.

“Most things on the menu are ‘greatest hits.’ But it’s local. We’re using 12-15 local farmers,” he said. “We’re probably the only restaurant here doing our own nixtamal,” he added, referring to the process that purifies corn.

The Seeker joins a cowboy-country upscale dining scene that includes Oma Leen’s in Hico, Newton’s Saddlerack in Stephenville, Second Bar + Kitchen in Mineral Wells, Rough Creek Lodge in rural Erath County and Bosque Cantina in Walnut Springs.

The Seeker is offering a three-course Valentine’s weekend dinner for $75 with tables available Feb. 13 or 15.

The Interstate Inn is offering a Valentine’s weekend special with a room, a Pyles cooking class on “Foods of Passion,” dinner and Sunday brunch for $2,500 per couple.

The Seeker is open for dinner only Tuesday through Saturday; 254-964-3550, theseekertx.com.

This story was originally published February 6, 2025 at 5:30 AM.

Lines wrapped around both the drive-thru and storefront corners Wednesday, Feb. 5 as dozens of customers patiently waited to try Fort Worth’s newest coffee shop, La La Land Kind Cafe.

The bright white and yellow building is hard to miss on 5733 Camp Bowie Blvd. This is the first Fort Worth location for the North Texas-based coffee shop. There are 11 other locations in the Dallas area.

The extreme lines are surprising, considering the fact that this is La La Land’s soft launch of the Fort Worth location. Drinks are currently half-off since baristas are still learning the ropes. The discount will last until Feb. 7 before the grand opening on Feb. 8.

Customer Natalie Nicol said it took “about 20 minutes” of waiting to get her drink, and the line was long even inside the cafe.

“But it was so worth the wait,” she said.

Here’s what to know about La La Land if you go visit the new Fort Worth location.

La La Land originally opened in 2019 at 5626 Bell Avenue in Dallas. The shop is famous for its sunny aesthetic, baristas who say “I love you” when they serve your latte and its TikTok account featuring drive-by videos of employees riding around telling random strangers, “You’re beautiful.”

Within the past six years, the coffee chain has grown to 20 more locations in Houston, Los Angeles, and now Fort Worth. The Camp Bowie location replaces a Smoothie King shop.

The coffee chain sells specialty espresso and matcha lattes in clear cups with bright yellow lids. They also sell an assortment of avocado and fruit toasts.

“I got the iced matcha latte,” Nicol said. “It was so yummy. They have my favorite drinks on the whole entire planet.”

She also got an avocado toast with truffle, burrata and red chili flakes. La La Land’s iced matcha lattes are $5.20 for a small and $5.70 for a large. Toasts are $9 to $10.

“I would always wait 20 to 30 minutes for a drink or food from there,” Nicol said. “I think they are going to get better at their timing once they get more practice.”

La La Land in Fort Worth is a quaint 1,686 square feet. The parking lot has about eight parking spaces, although there is street and neighborhood parking that surrounds it. Due to its small parking lot, the drive through line can only fit four to five cars which forces the excess out onto Halloran Street.

“The one thing that I didn’t like is that it’s kind of small,” said Nicol. “There’s probably about 10 to 12 small tables inside.”

The Camp Bowie location is still hiring. Baristas start at a base pay of $10 an hour plus tips. La La Land’s benefits also include dental and vision, a 401(k), paid holidays and employee discounts.

The coffee shop is looking for team members who will greet customers, make the orders and work a cash register. Applicants must have a high school diploma and previous barista or server experience.

La La Land is open from 6:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily.