A few doors down from Mama Betty’s Tex-Mex on Parmer Lane, dynamic duo Jason Carrier and Forrest Higdon opened Happy Slice Pizza last October, serving specialty pizzas, baked fornatas, salads, desserts and a full drink menu.

Craving pizza? One of the most popular specialty pizzas at Happy Slice is inspired by Carrier’s Tex-Mex restaurant. Known as the Barbacoa Betty, the pie is served with Mama Betty’s barbacoa, diced onions, cilantro, jalapeno crema and adobo sauce.

What’s special about it? Happy Slice dough is made with unbleached and unbromated flour, cellulose-free cheese and no artificial citric acid in the tomato sauce. The menu also offers gluten and dairy-free options for people with dietary restrictions. Happy Slice Pizza is also the first pizza restaurant in Texas to serve the San Nicola tomatoes in its sauce. Previously, the sauce was made exclusively for restaurants on the East Coast until the company opened a second production line, Hidgeon explained.

• 9900 W. Parmer Lane, Ste. 100, Austin

A new facility at Texas Children’s Hospital will offer free overnight stays, allowing families to be closer to their children undergoing medical treatment.

The big picture: Texas Children’s in Northwest Austin celebrated the opening of a Ronald McDonald House at the hospital with a ribbon-cutting ceremony March 30. The nonprofit opened its first in-hospital home in Central Texas to alleviate a growing waitlist of families seeking support, Ronald McDonald’s House staff said.

What they're saying: “Our families are going to be just steps away from their child's care,” said Arden Whitley, senior development director for Ronald McDonald House Charities of Central Texas.

The details: The new Texas Children’s Ronald McDonald House is the Central Texas chapter's second house and first facility located inside a hospital, Whitley said.

The house features nine bedrooms for up to 36 people, one of which is for transplant patients and their families, alongside a living room, kitchen and laundry facilities.

What's next: Ronald McDonald House will welcome the first three families at Texas Children’s on April 1.

From a new commercial building at The Domain shopping center to private school improvements and more, here are five of the most expensive projects filed with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation in the Austin metro this week.

1. Baer Manufacturing Crosspoint Tenant Improvement in Georgetown ($15.7 million): A 605,873-square-foot office, manufacturing and warehouse space will be built.

2. Domain 9.5 in Austin ($7 million): Austin-based Cousins Properties will construct a two-story, four-tenant commercial building with a parking garage at The Domain shopping center, totaling 31,410 square feet.

3. Veritas Academy in Austin ($7 million): The private school campus will add a gym, field house and community hall.

4. Gerber Collision and Glass in Liberty Hill ($2 million): The Illinois-based automotive repair company will build its fourth location in Williamson County. 

5. Driftwood Business Center in Austin ($600,000): The Driftwood Business Center will add a 6,648-square-foot warehouse with space for multiple tenants.

The world's largest semiconductor plant could be coming to Austin after billionaire Elon Musk announced the project at a March 21 livestreamed event in downtown Austin.

Terafab—a joint venture between Tesla, SpaceX and xAI—would be "the largest chip manufacturing facility ever," producing a combined compute capacity of 1 terawatt annually, according to a post by Tesla on X.

The big picture: The advanced technology fab would enable Musk's companies to escalate their production efforts, he said. Musk said current global semiconductor production meets only a fraction of the energy and compute demands his companies anticipate.

The facility would generate 100-200 gigawatts of chips for Optimus humanoid robots along with terawatts of chips for solar-powered AI satellites, according to Tesla information.

A closer look: In a post on X, Musk said Terafab could be 100 million square feet. Several potential sites are under consideration for the facility, he said.

Tesla opened its new 10 million-square-foot headquarters—Giga Texas—in southeast Travis County in 2021.

Austin leaders celebrated the opening of a new Southwest Airlines crew base March 25, a part of the airline's local expansion plans supported by an economic deal with the city that advanced last year.

The details: Southwest is now the largest carrier at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport and plans to continue growing its local presence. The crew base, or a hub for airline employees, is a key feature of Southwest's new incentive agreements with both the city and state. It's eventually expected to create more than 2,000 jobs over the coming years, mainly pilots and flight attendants with positions paying an average salary of $180,000.

Southwest previously said the crew base would open this March with around 335 pilots and 650 flight attendants, and would grow its headcount to around 2,000 by mid-2027.