Sunset Ridge's First Full Holiday Season Under New Owners Starts in the Old Tackle Box

For nearly four decades, the storefront at 6330 N. New Braunfels Ave. was Tackle Box Outfitters. The store closed in February 2026. On Oct. 15 it reopened as a Howler Brothers pop-up, and that lease runs out on Jan. 15.

That three-month lease is the most visible change at Sunset Ridge Shopping Center this holiday season. It's also the first real look at how the center's new owners plan to run it. Sunset Ridge lines the 6300 to 6500 block of North New Braunfels Avenue on the Terrell Heights side of the road. That's the San Antonio subdivision between the cities of Alamo Heights and Terrell Hills, and the center shares the 78209 ZIP code with Alamo Heights. This summer it turned 75. The holiday season starting now is its first full one under owners who closed on the property two days before Christmas last year.

Sunset Ridge doesn't change all at once. Change comes one storefront at a time, and only after a long-running tenant leaves. Right now that's two storefronts out of a 100,000-square-foot center.

A Lease Written to End in January

Howler Brothers is an Austin apparel company founded in 2010 by Chase Heard and Andy Stepanian. It sells clothing inspired by surfing, fishing and the outdoors. The pop-up fills the roughly 3,000 square feet Tackle Box left behind. A fishing-inspired clothing brand in a former fishing-gear store is about as gentle a handoff as a storefront gets.

The lease is the unusual part. George Wommack is CEO of Headwall Investments, which owns the center in a joint venture with Houston-based Fifth Corner. He told the San Antonio Express-News that the short-term deal breaks from how the center normally leases space:

"Typically, we wouldn't sign a short-term lease, but this is a situation where we think it's such a great fit for the market and we want to give them the opportunity to get in here and see what San Antonio is all about."

In the same interview, Wommack said he hopes the pop-up goes well enough that Howler Brothers chooses a permanent location in San Antonio. No permanent store has been announced. The pop-up's run covers Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's, so the brand's test of the San Antonio market happens during exactly those weeks.

The Other Storefront Has Been Waiting Since 2023

A few doors down, 6322 N. New Braunfels Ave. tells the slower half of the story. Twin Sisters Bakery & Cafe closed there in 2023 after 43 years. When Headwall bought the center in December 2025, that space was the only vacancy among 28 tenants. The new owners said at the time they hoped to fill it with another restaurant.

They found one. Swedish Hill, the bakery and café concept from Austin's MML Hospitality, will take over the roughly 3,000-square-foot space after extensive renovations. The Express-News reported on Oct. 12 that it plans to open next fall. If that schedule holds, the old Twin Sisters spot will have gone roughly four years between breakfast plates.

Here's how the two spaces compare this season:

Wommack wanted a tenant that could carry on what Twin Sisters did. "We were really hoping to find a tenant similar to Twin Sisters, which was there forever," he told the Express-News. He described it as a place where "if you wanted to have a breakfast meeting there or grab a sandwich and salad for lunch, that would be an option."

The menu fits that brief. Swedish Hill has four locations in Austin and one in Aspen, Colorado. It serves coffee, pastries, artisan breads, croissants, layer cakes, cookies and tarts all day, plus salads, sandwiches, rotisserie chicken and deli sides. In the evening, the bar serves beer and wine. Its best-selling sandwich is the Chicken Salad Pesto Crunch, with pickled green tomatoes and potato chips on white bread.

None of that arrives in time for this season. The owners closed on the center during last year's holidays, and this is their first full season in charge. The gap Twin Sisters left is still there.

Year One of a Ten-Year Plan

Both new names coming to Sunset Ridge are Austin companies doing their first business in San Antonio. Wommack said that was the goal from the start. When Headwall closed on the off-market deal on Dec. 23, 2025, buying from Austin-based Ironwood Real Estate, he told the Express-News the firm wanted to "enhance the tenant mix over the next decade or so, possibly with some Texas-based companies that want to enter the San Antonio market for the first time."

Ten months later, that's exactly what has happened, one storefront at a time. The other half of that statement matters as much: "We want to build off what Ironwood has set in place, and our priority is to maintain it in the best way possible." Headwall's acquisition announcement talked about curation and stewardship and laid out no center-wide renovation.

The Sunset Ridge sale was also the center's first change in ownership since 2003. Wommack has had his eye on the property since 2007, when he moved to San Antonio. For the center's 75th anniversary, he told the Express-News that the owners think of it as "the community's asset. This is their shopping center." At this pace, an owner that patient will reshape Sunset Ridge mostly through the vacancies that open up on their own, and long-running tenants here leave only every few years.

The Layout That Has Held Since 1951

The same pace explains why so much of the center looks the way it did generations ago. Sunset Ridge opened on June 29, 1951, with a Friday night block party. Architect Bartlett Cocke designed it, at a cost of $750,000, next to the newly finished Sunset Ridge apartments, just north of the Spanish Colonial Revival home that later became the McNay Art Museum. The first tenants included Wylie's Drug Store, McLaughlin Hardware and Appliances, a Piggly Wiggly and the Sunset Cocktail Bar.

According to the Express-News anniversary profile, the basic layout has stayed put ever since. Holiday errands this year run through the same lineup:

1. The drugstore at the north end. It was Wylie's in 1951 and is CVS today.
2. The hardware store in the middle. McLaughlin Hardware once held that role. Amy and David Doyle opened Sunset Ridge Home and Hardware in 1995, and it's now Sunset & Co.
3. Baskin-Robbins, at the center of the complex. It sits under the covered walkways with shaded benches out front.
4. Invitations Etc., for holiday cards. The Express-News counts this stationery shop among the center's long-running tenants, in business for four decades.

Beyond those four, the gift list has plenty of options. The center's tenant directory includes Kelly Wade Jewelers, Capri by Sunset, Belles & Beaux, Mike's Dog Store and Cobblestone Shoe Hospital. For food, it lists Julian's, Boss Bagel, EZ's and Baskin-Robbins. SeaZar's Fine Wine & Spirits handles the bottle for the host. In the anniversary profile, one father described his family's regular stops: Kelly Wade Jewelers, Sunset & Co. for hardware, SeaZar's for wine and Mike's Dog Store for their dog. The same directory covers the non-gift errands too, with Great Clips, Jack Brown Cleaners, Alamo Heights Pet Clinic, Orangetheory and CoreFit.

The Express-News also talked with Cayce Yarbrough, who grew up in nearby Oak Park, about her Sunset Ridge memories. She said she and her two adult daughters still do their Christmas shopping at the center. Put the familiar lineup next to the two new names and you get a center that's 75 years old, under new ownership, and almost entirely unchanged on the walk from CVS to the Baskin-Robbins counter.

The Howler Brothers pop-up at 6330 N. New Braunfels Ave. stays open through Jan. 15. Swedish Hill is planned to open next fall at 6322.

When a center like Sunset Ridge changes owners, it can make you wonder what will happen to the rest of the neighborhood around it. I follow these storefronts and leases closely because they shape daily life on this stretch of North New Braunfels, and I'm always glad to compare notes about what's opening, what's closing and what it means for the streets nearby. If you're curious about Terrell Hills, Terrell Heights or Alamo Heights, Leslie Reyes Idais would be happy to talk it through with you. Let's Connect.