The Fiesta on the corner of Studewood and 14th St. in the Heights still has “a couple more years” left on its lease, but Weingarten Realty has put the property up for sale.
The 28,466-sq.-ft. grocery store sits on a 1.76 acre site. Also included: 2 neighboring lots off Algregg St. used for parking and a third with a bungalow-turned shop on it.
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The asking price, at just under $3.5 million, yields a cap rate of just 4.19 percent — or a decent-size chunk of the Heights for $38 a square foot.
- 14th & Studewood [Page Partners]
Photo: Swamplot inbox. Plan: Page Partners
Thanks for the Fiesta lease investigation! Good to know we’ve got the grocery store for at least a couple more years. I’m adding this property to my list of Heights properties to keep tabs on – along with the large White Oak parcels where high-rises and a multi-story parking garage were supposedly planned.
Wouldn’t it be nice if a builder with real vision and community spirit came in and built some beautiful, well built homes with character?
Sorry, was I snoring?
More homes? Really? I’m for continued use as retail. The Heights is rich in “beautiful, well built homes with character” (as well as a wide variety of other types of homes!). If we are lucky, maybe the lot will be re-developed into another expensive vanity restaurant….
The Fiesta is a slice of life – I will miss it if it goes. The upsides (price, convenience, music, beer selection, the cafe with the “most intimidating steam table in Houston”) far outweigh the numerous negatives (dirty parking lot, hot stinking dumpster right by the sidewalk, no windows and blank back wall to Studewood).
We hope we to see newer grocery or maybe with a small cafe-coffee- wine kind of thing. No more large apt complexes like on Yale st. or townhomes w/ no parking. This neck of the heights can’t handle it. The empty lots that part of the Fiesta property at been at times campgrounds for the homeless guys and meeting spots for folks that seem to want to meet late at night for “business”. the discoteca -beauty shop was re done into a house-office that has been vacant for along time, wish some nice person would lease it.
I love that Fiesta – it’s where we buy most of our groceries. I hope it stays open for a long, long time.
The Fiesta is NOT closing for a good while. I got that straight from my inside source this morning at breakfast. Rest easy.
I live immediately next to the “northern finger” of parking. I REALLY don’t want anything to happen to the Fiesta. I bought the house partly because I could walk to a grocery. I’m also curious how they get $3+ million, when HCAD values it at $1.6M.
If I had the money, I’d buy it myself as an income-producing property, as well as to keep it from transitioning to something else.
Oh, and Brad, what is “a good while?” How much longer DO they have on their lease?
I am all for a well planned retail development as well. Dave, HCAD appraisals are way under market value. Don’t go by them.
Please no more homes there. The heights is finally starting to get more commercial and retail property to give it some balance despite the lodestone of the alcohol restrictions. Personally I hope Fiesta stays and carries out the sort of improvements that we have seen at the Shepherd store over the last couple of years.
Remember though that Kroger is going to be carrying out a pretty large expansion southwards on their site at Shepherd and 11th. The units on the south side are all now empty and will presumambly start being refitted at some point. Will this affect business at the 14th st. Fiesta?
Dave, Cannot tell you unless I kill you -grin-, but the story is accurate.
How about keeping the Fiesta but giving it a much needed renovation!? It’s a convenient eye-sore in its current state.
Fiesta should really focus on filling the need for a grocery store in the West End. Their store on Blalock and I-10 closed and all of their stores in the Height are dumps, including the recently touched up Shepherd store, which is still a dump. The West End really could use a grocery store. The closest ones to the West End are the aforementioned rathole Fiesta on Studewood, the Kroger on West Gray, and the dumpy Kroger on Shepherd. Fiesta has their corporate office in the West End, but has so far chosen not to invest in that area with an actual store. I had thought the perfect place to put in another Fiesta would have been in the Sawyer Heights Target shopping center. That does not appear to be in the works.
I’d have to disagree about the Fiesta on Shepherd. I think there has been a massive improvement in that store, at least internally. The Kroger on Shepherd is in the process of being expanded into some of the other units further South of it. Rumor has it that upon completion it will be the largest Kroger in the South West of the country. Presumambly it won’t be quite so dumpy then. I’m still looking forward to 99 Ranch opening up on Blalock and I10 which will save me having to traipse all the way down to Viet Hoa on the beltway.
If you ask me, what is needed on 14th is a smaller store along the lines of a Pavilions or one of Tesco’s new Fresh & Easy stores. This would potentially have a smaller fottprint and allow for some other associated development on that parcel.
I would love to see an improvement of that Feista, or some other, cleaned up retail going in there. As for an expansion of the Kroger on Shepherd and 11th, fantastic. I like it now, and more choices would be great. I live near the Convenience Store Kroger on 18th. That place needs a bulldozer. I would frankly rather Kroger spend its money improving that store. I avoid it at all costs.
Oh, for a Trader Joe’s on 14th and Studewood…
Yes–to a Trader Joe’s…or, just a good meat and fish mkt that doesn’t cost a fortune.
Send location requests to Trader Joe’s at http://traderjoes.com/location_requests_form.aspx
There was a push from out of state immigrants in the Heights to get a Trader Joe’s a few years back. The official response was that Texas generally was far too expensive for them to open a store in from a logistics standpoint. We are unfortunately a long way from their existing logistics network.
Houston (& Texas) will never get a Trader Joes. Grocery business is much too competitive on the high end here. If a TJ’s went in, the traffic and parking would be horrible….people would flock to it like Central Market.
I’m glad the Shepherd Kroger is getting a fix-up. Heights needs a better grocery store….how about a Randalls or decent HEB? No townhomes or apartments needed in that part of town.
Chuys should move in.
sigh.. i deteste gentrification.
i’ve lived in the heights since 82 and this saddens me even more that when cedar creek opened on 19th street or when the Heights Festival came to an end. Hopefully someone who has lived in the neighborhood longer than 5 yrs will swoop in and buy it and then at least we can all save ourselves from the eyesore of a mini strip center or a towering alluminum townhome or some bullshit coffe and wine place. please! Yuppies please stay out of the heights and go back to the suburbs, your killing the sould of the neighborhood, this isn’t keep austin weird 2.0, it’s generations being displaced so you can yuppie it up on 6th street or down the blvd with your ugly pale children.The Heights has historically been a low income working immigrant and minority neighborhood (look it up on HUD statistical data reference). you all have your suv’s, the lenghty travel in from spring or sugarland can’t be that bad, let us have our bus routes, heights festivals, and fiestas. If you promise to leave soon, we promise to stop breaking in to steel your wii and empregnating your skeezy daughters behind the “dump of a fiesta next to the smelly dumpster” or is that smell your skeezy white daughter?
Posted On: Tuesday, Feb. 24 2009 @ 2:57PM
Herebefore,
You, dear neighbor, need an attitude adjustment. That’s all the effort I’m going to waste on you today.
By far and away the best piped in store music anywhere. Great mix of characters and cheap prices. Please don’t go…places like this make the Heights rich in character.
Miss B/S,
What a perfect name by the way.
“a blight by citizens who would prefer to live in a city where leaving one’s front porch doesn’t automatically make for an eyesore headache.”
you are to me what the giant cross is to you. the huge eyesore that calls to others just like you from miles aways saying “come in, the water’s fine” while ignoring those you might be displacing or offending in your wake. but go ahead, be a biggot. i mean obviously your bank account makes you superior to the overall population of the city. encroach on us like christians encroach on nations worldwide. and i’ll be happy to waste all the time it takes to make you see you are the stain on what used to be my favorite t-shirt.
herebefore,
You have no idea where I live, how I live, what’s in my bank account, where I like to buy my groceries, what I paid for my house, when I bought it, and the circumstances under which I did. You also are ignorant of the fact that my family lived and worked and was buried in this part of town generations before you were an itch in your daddy’s pants. Your semi-literate insult-slinging does you no favors. Adios.
I know HEREBEFORE. He is my neighbor and he is really a teddybear. He just has an issue or two with increasing property values and he blames us for it.
Hell, *I* have an issue with increasing property values. I blame HCAD and the townhouse developers.
ms. b/s
you’ve proven no point and debunked none of mine. your semi literate pointless affirmation that your a nice person who displaced no one does you no favors and does not change my opinion. nice to know your feathers are so easily ruffled. must be because i hit a cord eh? did you notice that no one else bothered to respond to my comments because really it was just a rant from a long time resident griping about the changes, you however felt the need to comment although you had no real point to make other than the fact that i am being mean. waaah play nice herebefore. waaah!
well ms. b/s, thanks for the laughs, sub par sparing with you has been a nice little get me by at work, your like my personal little sodoku puzzle, only much easier to finish off.
oh to think of the time you’ve wasted responding and angrily brainstorming as to what will put me in my place. ooh ooh my tummy hurts from laughing. your just waaaay too much fun. by the way who’s your family?
the allen brothers?? Danny Cooley?
Unfortunately, you can’t determine the type of person that lives next door to you or prevent the demographic changes that go on in your neighborhood. The market dictates that, and the market seems to be bringing in an element that you don’t like.
So, if you are unhappy with the changes you’re seeing or feel that your neighborhood is losing its soul, you can always move.
Just saying.