The Onera Wimberley Story

We've wanted to build a treehouse hotel in Wimberley even before creating Onera Fredericksburg, which opened back in 2021. 

Just 45 minutes south of Austin, Wimberley is the ideal location for a landscape hotel with dramatic hill country views, a quaint town square, and renowned natural water features: Cypress Creek, Blue Hole, and Jacob's Well.

When the property on Buttercup Lane hit our Zillow inbox in March 2021, we were 90% sure it was “the one” before even visiting the site.

We had to see it. After a year of searching, we were sure this was the site.

After hobbling up a caliche road, there was a small clearing in the hillside, where we could see the priceless views for our next landscape hotel. 

Onera Fredericksburg wasn’t even half built yet, but we knew we had to get this Wimberley property locked up to be Onera’s second location.

Then we met the 60-something year old couple who had lived there for decades. Lovely people who cared deeply about the property. 

Initially they were just selling 5 acres of their 20 acre tract. 

But, the wife mentioned some interest in selling their remaining 15 acres and moving up north to be closer to the grandkids. 

Her husband seemed reluctantly on board. He had clearly poured his blood sweat and tears into this beautiful property, and it was hard for him to let go. 

Though, he did admit the property was getting hard for him to care for in his elder years. 

Ultimately, we agreed on a number, and actually brought our cost per acre way down by buying all 20 instead of just the 5.

On the original 5 acres, we had planned 10 or so units like we did at the original Onera Fredericksburg. All of a sudden we had the option of 20 acres and upwards of 30 units. 

We thought there was a non-zero chance we were biting off more than we could chew, but then again, that’s also what we thought when we first built Onera Fredericksburg. 

And that worked out extraordinarily well. 

This opportunity seemed too perfectly aligned, and we went for it.

Wimberley was much more challenging than Fredericksburg in terms of getting permits / entitlements. 

The project took over a year of planning and $6M in value engineering to land at a viable budget.

Then, at the 5-yard line, the debt crisis hit. Our lender, who had assured us we were good to go for 12 months, suddenly pulled the rug out from underneath us.

All of a sudden, we were scrambling for debt as interest rates were skyrocketing, nearly all the local banks were at allocation, and no one was lending. A nightmare situation.

Ultimately we pulled through, largely with the help of the public REIT Summit who had purchased a majority interest in Onera Fredericksburg by then. 

They wanted to acquire a second Onera location, so they helped back our senior bank debt and offered us mezzanine debt, with an option to purchase Onera Wimberley upon completion.

We thought we were done. Good to go! But no…

Turns out, a public company requires quite a bit of legal and compliance hoops to jump through before getting an intercreditor agreement done with the local bank.

After four months, we finally got it done and had our construction loan in hand in January 2023. 

We had somehow landed the 747 in the Hudson. 

We're not sure what kept the team going, aside from the wondrous beauty of that hillside perched atop Buttercup Lane with the best sunset views in Wimberley.

With the help of our all star GC, our construction has always been on track in terms of time and budget since we broke ground in 2023. 

And in September 2024 we opened Onera Wimberley to the world!

But even our pre-launch came with its own set of challenges.

Our pre-launch for Onera Wimberley generated more excitement than even we were expecting. 

The first influencer collab that went live generated over 1,100,000 views, skyrocketing our account to over 10,000 followers overnight.

Great, right?

Until our booking site crashed from the massive influx of traffic and we were left scrambling to figure out the fix before losing out on countless reservations.

Even after construction was complete, we entered into a whole new world of challenges to overcome.