Sources tell Swamplot that the River Oaks Baptist School is buying the building occupied by Walgreens at 3900 Westheimer Rd., at the southern end of the school’s campus on Willowick Rd. The school will reportedly use the 1.8-acre property vacated by the drug-store chain (and pictured above) for a “possible parking garage and secondary exit onto Westheimer.”
Walgreens won’t be leaving the Highland Village area, however. Workers are already transforming the former Fresh Market grocery store at 3745 Westheimer Rd. (pictured below) into a new Walgreens. It’s currently scheduled to open in March:
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Fresh Market lasted only 7 months in the store, which is almost catty-corner to the Walgreens that River Oaks Baptist is buying. It closed last March. The Rice Epicurean grocery store in that location closed in early 2013.
Here’s another view of the about-to-exit Walgreens at 3900 Westheimer, across the street:
- Previously on Swamplot:Â Stale After 7 Months, Fresh Market at Westheimer and Weslayan Is Shutting Down;Â Rice Epicurean Giving Up the Groceries, Leasing 4 Locations to Fresh Market
Photos: Swamplot inbox
Because darn It, there’s such a dearth of Walgreens!
Fresh Market chose a bad time to expand to Houston. Another of their locations is across from the new Whole Foods in BLVD Place. I bet that will close down soon too. High prices, small selection are not a winning combination.
Great news, an old faithful going into that location instead of some hipster right now store that will fold in 3 months!
Thank goodness the Walgreen’s isn’t going away; that’s my pharmacy! However, Highland Village will lose parking spaces. Even though it’s supposed to be for Walgreen’s only, a lot of people park there. Does the school really want a secondary exit onto Westheimer without a traffic light? They better not have cops stopping traffic on Westheimer like they do on Willowick!
Also, Westheimer is not the “back door” of any property along that stretch. It will look kinda weird to have a parking garage that will only be used during school hours taking up some very valuable street frontage. But hey, it’s their land.
I know at one point in the early to mid-90s one trustee for ROB came up with the idea of slowly purchasing all the cute small houses on the East side of Drexel. I think there were some re-zoning issues that would have had to have been taken care of, but they thought they could do it. He argued that it would be a long term plan, but that it could increase the campus size by as much as 50%. The headmaster or chairman of the board, or whatever they have at ROB, argued that most parents wouldn’t want to fund such a long term measure and that other needs were more pressing.
Since then, larger houses have been built and lot values have incredibly increased making this strategy far less financially friendly. However, I wonder if that strategy was possible today (it may still be, I have no idea), how the price of all those houses together would compare to prime property on Westheimer right on the edge of Highland Village.
What about the Jenny Craig?
@Nuke, I hadn’t heard that information about them trying to buy up lots on Drexel; very interesting! Probably too prohibitive to do now, since, as you said, a lot of those homes have been razed and are being replaced by much larger homes. It’s like people have suddenly discovered Oak Estates in recent years. It used to be a way to live in the River Oaks area without the RO prices, but with all the new home construction, the prices are fast approaching $1M. They’re even building really nice homes right next to the RR tracks.
Why couldn’t this have been another mattress store?!? We already have like a hundred drug stores in the area and only about 75 mattress stores! I was really hoping we would get another mattress store with zero customers at that location too! We need more of those empty stores. Outside the loop down Westheimer we have like a million title loan stores. We need more of those inside the loop too.
This location has a very handy expanded selection of Products For The Elderly And/Or Infirm that i wish my local branch had. I’ve wondered if the neighborhood skews older.
Lots of valuable frontage on Westheimer that is being wasted. what a shame. This would be a great high-end free-standing restaurant site.