From the Swamplot tip jar comes this little cookie: A site plan for an unnamed grocery store and 3 fast-food drive-thru or bank-style pad sites on Highland Knolls Dr., across Westgreen Blvd. from Memorial Parkway Junior High School in Katy. And with it comes only a “rumor”: that the grocery would be a Walmart Neighborhood Market like the one the company is now constructing in nearby Cinco Ranch. The average size of a Walmart Neighborhood Market is 38,000 sq. ft., about one-fifth the size of a typical Supercenters.
The former Spring Branch Church of the Nazarene (now known as the Living Word Church of the Nazarene) purchased the 9.75-acre corner property in 2004. According to a report in Covering Katy back in February, the church had already requested the property be designated commercial.
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The grocery-store portion of the proposed development, which would come in just under 5 acres of the total according to the site plan shown above, would back up to a planned extension of Norwalk Dr. On the opposite side of Norwalk is the site where Gueffen Development has plans for a 3-story, 171-unit apartment complex, and some residents of nearby Nottingham Country and Kelliwood have been signing petitions and attending neighborhood meetings to try to stop it.
- Petitioners protest proposed Katy-area apartments [Houston Chronicle]
- Katy Residents Petition To Stop Apartment Complex On Highland Knolls – Ask M.U.D. To Deny Water & Sewer [Covering Katy]
- Our History [Living Word Church of the Nazarene]
Photo: LoopNet
So would this mean that the church was able to hold onto this land for 10 years tax free? Nice way to make some money if it is, when there’s no pressure to sell vacant land because your appraisals keep going up.
Wow! A new Walmart in the Houston burbs, how revolutionary!
These suburbanites won’t be happy until they’ve made every place look like Katy!
[yawn] Another piece of vacant suburban land gets swallowed up by a retail chain.
just what Katy needs
If it’s a Walmart, wouldn’t alcohol sales not be allowed because of the school across the street?
Scale indicates it’s at least 300 feet. I think that’s the state rule, but I am not sure about unincorporated Harris County, I think Houston is 1,000 feet. Good question.
Walmart has a way of ruining neighborhoods. We don’t need this store so close to schools and churches.
Looks like the plans include a refueling station. Are there permitting restrictions in putting in a refueling depot so close to a residential neighborhood?
Really sad. We moved to Memorial Parkway in the 2000s and found it to be quite nice compared to the Sharpstown area that we lived in. The area was quiet, very little traffic and YOU WERE SEATED IMMEDIATELY when you went out to eat. The schools were awesome. Slowly, we noticed that West Houston was moving into South/East Katy. We noticed these garbage retail outlets like, cell phone stores, Dollar General, Pollo Chicken joints and the like moving into spaces on S. Mason. Apartments were built to the north of us and then were built on Mason Road. The traffic went from 8 cars waiting at an intersection to 30 cars. Saturdays are just ridiculous on S Mason. I am not even going to mention traffic on 99. The schools start to slip each year as the population of the schools began to rise. Then the real sign of things to come… Gang tags on houses, cars, street signs, and on the Chipotle… A fire due to arson in the subdivision. Two crackhouses in the neighborhood and a police force that remains to be small. That was it for me. It took just 8 years to go from nice to sub-par. We were not going to wait another year and we sold our house and watched Katy in our rearview mirror. It is no surprise that Houston is now annexing all of Katy, except for Old Town Katy. That might help with the police presence. BUT, A mini-Walmart and another apartment complex in South Katy?!?!? Not needed. What’s next? Take out the medians with oaktrees to compensate for traffic? Why don’t they build a big one, where there is more space and is easy to get in and out of. There are plenty of places north of I-10.