A steep, 90-foot drop in elevation and soil that shifts under pressure might have stopped a lesser project. Instead, it became the defining engineering puzzle behind Creek View High School, the new campus that made Medina Valley Independent School District a two-high-school system this year. The school opened in August 2026 with students in grades nine through 11, giving the fast-growing district west of San Antonio its second comprehensive high school.
The project carried a price tag described as $264 million, according to Texas A&M College of Architecture, though other accounts give differing figures: the San Antonio Express-News reported $264.5 million in bond funding, while My Neighborhood News put the estimated combined cost of two construction packages at $261.6 million, including a primary construction package valued at approximately $239.6 million and a separate $22 million site-development package. The campus’s exact footprint is similarly disputed across sources, with figures ranging from 425,000 square feet to approximately 435,000 square feet to more than 450,000 square feet, according to The Business Journals. Student capacity figures also vary, with The Business Journals’ provided facts citing a design capacity of 2,400 students while the Express-News reported the school can serve up to 2,200.
Two Childhood Friends Lead the Build
What isn’t in dispute is who ran the job. R.T. Hoog served as project manager and Trevor Mangold as superintendent, and both are Medina Valley ISD alumni who grew up together in the community and still live in the area, per The Business Journals. Hoog managed schedules, budgets, and coordination with district leaders, according to Texas A&M College of Architecture, while Mangold coordinated as many as 380 subcontractors at peak construction — described elsewhere as 380 subcontractor employees on site, per The Business Journals’ sourcing.
The project reportedly stands as Bartlett Cocke General Contractors’ largest school project by size and construction cost at the time it was undertaken, per the same account. The build involved collaboration among Medina Valley ISD, architecture firm O’Connell Robertson, Bartlett Cocke, and various trade partners. Bartlett Cocke is described as an employee-owned Texas commercial construction firm that has partnered with Texas communities since 1959, with offices in San Antonio, Austin, and Houston, including Bryan-College Station, serving markets that include healthcare, higher education, K-12 education, civic and government, commercial, and industrial and manufacturing work.
Carving a Campus Into a Hillside
The site itself presented a serious engineering challenge. With a 90-foot drop from one end to the other, the design required Hoog and Mangold’s team to carve the structure directly into a hillside, according to Texas A&M College of Architecture. The Business Journals’ sourcing similarly describes expansive soils and nearly 90 feet of elevation change at the site, and says the project team approached construction as three separate structures with multiple work fronts, coordinating retaining walls, grading, and drainage structures to manage runoff…