The Texas A&M University System (TAMUS), in partnership with The City of McAllen and Hidalgo County, opened the Texas A&M University Higher Education Center at McAllen. This is Texas A&M University’s first academic building in the Rio Grande Valley and as the first building, it helped set the design standard for the future. The goal was to create a facility that spoke to Texas A&M’s engineering and science initiatives but also blend in with its location in a community neighborhood. The building has a mixture of warm stone elements and wood, but the steel, glass and metal panel elements also play off the warm materials. We oriented the first building toward one of the major street intersections of the development to see landscaping, a pond and an outdoor space. One of the steel and glass elements floats over the first-floor entry and creates student focused spaces. A world-class auditorium and lecture hall with much glass was created to allow for outside views. The building includes multi-use spaces and shared facilities supporting interdisciplinary programs. The building contains a lecture hall, mid-size and small general classrooms to support both core curriculum and program specific classes, and laboratories for engineering, technology and education classes. Students have access to tech-driven smart classrooms plus distance-learning classrooms with 80-inch monitors, cameras, voice-activated microphones and speakers, which enable them to interact other Texas A&M campuses. There are offices for administrative personnel, faculty, staff, teaching assistants, security and operations. Project development included master planning for parking, site development, utilities future building locations. A perforated zinc sunscreen on the westside of the building prevents significant heat gain and energy. We were also able to perforate the Texas A&M seal to serve as a key indicator to the main entrance.