Megan Navarro
DRIPPING SPRINGS — The Sententia Vera Cultural Hub in Dripping Springs has served as a space for people to come together to host events, gatherings, community engagement sessions and more for decades. However, now, the property has been placed on the market to find its new owner.
The space started in 1997 as an innovative green building project led by Bridget and Bill Hauser, with the help of builder Keith Miller. The vision later opened doors for Sunset Canyon Pottery, establishing it as one of the first eco-conscious commercial buildings in the Texas Hill Country. According to the Sententia Vera Cultural Hub website, the building was built with straw bale and stucco walls, a metal frame and roof, concrete floors and a 40,000-gallon rainwater harvesting system; the property has and continues to be considered a climate- and earth-friendly low-impact commercial landmark.
“They decided that they were going to build green and, back then, there weren’t any commercial green builders, per se. They took it upon themselves to learn about green building, how to do it and then, put out a call to the community — their friends, their neighbors, other potters and then those curious about green building and what all the hullabaloo was,” explained current owner Teresa Carbajal. “They said, ‘We will come lend a hand’ … It’s really an iconic historic green building in the sense that it was built by the actual community back then.”
Now, it’s known as the Sententia Vera Cultural Hub. Carbajal took possession of the property in January 2017 and, after a remodeling project, held a grand opening that summer.
The hub had blossomed into a multicultural bookshop, coffee and wine cafe and gathering event space that paved the way for fostering dialogue, creativity and community engagement. It has also been a home to Carbajal’s business, a Latina-owned consultancy specializing in cultural communication, community relations, training and development.
“One of my goals was to continue that community hub, a community-creating energy, what I call the feminine energy that that property has, in a sense that it's all about sustainable environmental ideas, discussions [on] how we can do better to really sustain our Texas Hill Country beauty. So, I took it over. I did some minor changes and improvements to fit my business, which is that of a co-working, shared community space that anyone and everyone can use,” she said.
She explained that during the working hours of Monday through Friday, several businesses have used the space as their office or to meet clients and have team meetings; also, in the evenings or on the weekends, it’s used as an event venue. This ranges from board game nights to celebrations, anniversaries, workshops, town halls and candidate forums.
“It's a safe and brave space for the community to come and really get back to being able to talk with one another, speak with one another, share ideas, share visions, ask questions [and] be curious. That's what I made it out to be,” the owner said.
Being a consultant, Carbajal specializes in community engagement building with the Spanish-speaking and immigrant communities. So, she helps specifically nonprofit and educational institutions to market and engage with the growing Spanish-speaking community in Central Texas. She explained that, while her consulting business helped her purchase the Sententia Vera Cultural Hub building and property, she feels it’s the right time to sell to focus more on her role in producing campaigns for organizations to engage with the populations she specializes in.
“With the new administration's initiative to close down everything related to equity and inclusion — especially in Texas, nonprofits and educational institutions have started shutting down their DEI programs and their DEI initiatives — several of my consulting contracts were canceled. So, because I do not want to reinvent my consulting or stray from what I do, because that's what I believe my purpose is, I had to look at other states, other areas of the nation that continue to have their DEI programs,” she said. “That's what's taking me out of that area and requires more attention to traveling out of town and less attention to my hub. It's becoming more and more difficult for me to have a direction in both my consulting and the community hub that I decided … to sell the property and really be strategic about trying to get someone who honors and respects the environment, the sustainability movement [and] the green mission, so that they can take the property to its next level.”
Currently, the hub is still open for business owners who need a space Monday through Friday, as well as the private events or any others that are organized and produced by organizations. However, what has been closed down already is the coffee and wine bar, along with the events that Carbajal used to produce for community building.
As Carbajal is looking to close down the hub once she finds the right owner, she said that she is grateful for the community members who have supported the space over the years.
“I had a few encounters with hate, but, for the most part, just the amount of community members that came in, curious enough to come through the doors and try and figure out how they could make use of the building, how they could participate in the business, how they could get involved in the voter registrations, how to get involved in the Dripping Springs adult education program [and] how to sustain the business because they really wanted it to be successful,” she said. “We were successful. We are successful. I have an incredible amount of gratitude to every single community member who came through those doors to advocate for the mission of the cultural hub and really support me in what I was doing, what I was creating and in the community members that they met.”
The handcrafted eco-friendly commercial building with 5,000 square feet that sits on 1.573 acres is for sale for $2,450,000, with a $20,000 credit offer toward the installation of a high-efficiency HVAC system to stay true to the property’s original environmental stewardship and climate-friendly vision.
“My hope is that the next business model there not only respects the green, sustainable aspect of it, but also recognizes that the community there — of Southwest Austin, Dripping Springs, even as far as Wimberly, Blanco and Johnson City — know that building, know that property and that they incorporate some kind of community hub in their next business model,” Carbajal concluded.
To learn more about the Sententia Vera Cultural Hub, visit www.sententiavera.com.
