April 27, 2012 – 11:31 am
Its brand-new, built-from-scratch store at the Woodlands Crossing Shopping Center near the corner of Woodlands Pkwy. and Kuykendahl Rd. (10868 Kuykendahl if you’re setting coordinates now) looking darn near ready-to-be-shopped-in (above), Trader Joe’s has at last announced an opening date for it: June 15th. Openings of the 2 other announced Houston-area stores — in the former Alabama Theater on S. Shepherd and West Alabama, and in a new building on Voss just north of San Felipe in Memorial — will take place before the end of the year, but haven’t yet been publicly scheduled.
Photo: Sweetmocha
Read more about: 77382, Grocery Stores, Openings and Closings, Retail, Shopping Centers, The Woodlands
Stalking the new Trader Joe’s is apparently a competitive sport in The Woodlands. And here’s the latest score, sent in by yet another Woodlands-area Swamplot reader who’s marking construction progress at the Woodlands Crossing Shopping Center at 10868 Kuykendahl, just south of Woodlands Pkwy. and across the street from H-E-B. Yes, the very first TJ’s in the Houston area looks for all the world like just another steel-frame-and-stucco building at the butt-end of a parking lot. Except, of course, this one’s got the Trader Joe’s sign attached to the facade’s high forehead:
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Read more about: 77382, Grocery Stores, Retail, Shopping Centers, The Woodlands
March 29, 2012 – 12:36 pm
Trader Joe’s has at last confirmed the second and third of the 3 stores that’ll constitute the idiosyncratic grocer’s Houston invasion. If you’ve been following Swamplot, you already know about these locations: In addition to the already announced shopping-center add-on in The Woodlands (recent construction photo at top), there’s another to be constructed in suburban-style big-corniced splendor (midde photo, above) on Voss just north of San Felipe. And yes — the company is now ready to admit — one in the just-decimated hollows of the once-grand Alabama Theater, last known as the Alabama Bookstop bookstore (bottom photo above).
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Read more about: 77057, 77098, 77382, Grocery Stores, Memorial, Proposed Developments, Retail, Shopping Centers, The Woodlands, Upper Kirby
January 30, 2012 – 10:04 am
One of several Trader Joe’s stalkers in The Woodlands sends us this pic of the shopping center site at 10868 Kuykendahl Rd. near Woodlands Pkwy., “looking more and more like a store!” The photo was taken Sunday; no opening date is listed on the Trader Joe’s website, but it’s expected to be sometime this spring.
Photo: Swamplot inbox
Read more about: 77382, Grocery Stores, New Construction, Retail, Shopping Centers, The Woodlands
January 3, 2012 – 10:15 am
That’s it, right there, next to Petco: Trader Joe’s first Houston-area store, now in fetal form in the shopping center at 10868 Kuykendahl Rd., across the street from the H-E-B at Woodlands Pkwy. New Swamplot reader Michael E. sends these pix showing how far construction has progressed since the dusty days of last November. The steel frame is up! When do the multi-pack avocados come in?
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Read more about: 77382, Grocery Stores, New Construction, Retail, Shopping Centers, The Woodlands
November 8, 2011 – 10:55 am
The Trader Joe’s market in The Woodlands looks like dirt. For now, at least. Yesterday, the company finally admitted that this tree-stripped site in the under-construction Woodlands Crossing Shopping Center at the corner of Kuykendahl Rd. and Woodlands Parkway will be the first Houston-area store to open (even though the other potential TJ’s location on the horizon — in-town, inside the former Alabama Theater — appears to be in the moving-dirt-around stages as well). Swamplot broke the news of The Woodlands store’s location last week — then asked readers to send in pics showing how far construction has progressed. And our Woodlands-area readers came through with these photos from yesterday and over the weekend, showing just how a baby shopping-center TJ’s is born:
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Read more about: 77382, Grocery Stores, New Construction, Retail, Shopping Centers, The Woodlands
November 7, 2011 – 10:59 pm
“My mom moved to Afton Oaks as a child & went to Lamar. I grew up in the Galleria area & my family now lives in TW because we work out of our homes and, when that’s the case, TW becomes the more rational place to raise a family. The air is cleaner, the free schools better; the city has been officially declared bike friendly, and the 160 miles of paths are great for a runner like me. I really don’t want to spend $300,000 over 12 years sending my children to private and then never be able to retire. Sometimes as a native Houstonian who lived in H-Town — Galleria, Rice Military, downtown loft — for much, much longer than we have lived here, this back-and forth is tiresome. “Chains” up here include Hubbell & Hudson, 1252, and the G’s, and those who tend to blindly diss TW are simply ignorant. So; fine; I’m glad we’re getting a TJ. Houston’s going to be getting one too.” [M77002, commenting on Here’s Where the First Trader Joe’s Is Going — in The Woodlands]
Read more about: 77382, Comments, Retail, The Woodlands
November 3, 2011 – 2:55 pm
Woodlanders wondering where Trader Joe’s is going to land, here’s your answer: Next to Petco in the Woodlands Crossing Shopping Center at 10868 Kuykendahl Rd., across from the H-E-B market at the intersection of Woodlands Pkwy. There’s nothing too dramatic about the plans for it, either: It’ll be a 13,500 sq. ft. space, with what looks like a typical shopping-center storefront:
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Read more about: 77382, Buildouts, Grocery Stores, Retail, The Woodlands
Prancing onto the market just yesterday: This 10,672-sq.-ft. gated bouquet in that cute little already gated neighborhood in The Woodlands, not far from the smaller mansion Chamillionaire generously handed over to the bank last year. Features 6 bedrooms, 6 full baths, 6 balconies, a 5-car garage, all guarded by a small army of spotlit corbels. There’s a putting and pitching green in the yard of the acre-plus lot; you can warm up there before braving the winding, mile-long trek to the Carlton Woods golf course.
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Read more about: 77382, Carlton Woods, Homes for Sale, Interiors, The Woodlands
Here’s what you wanted to see: nice fuzzy photos of the 7,583-sq.-ft. mansion in a gated neighborhood in The Woodlands recently repossessed from rap star Chamillionaire. Talking to TMZ reporter and comedian Adam Glyn yesterday in front of the W Hotel near New York’s Times Square, the Houston native says he gave the house in Carlton Woods back to the bank because he “just didn’t feel like it was a good business investment to keep paying that much mortgage for a house that I’m never at.”
This house actually was my most expensive mortgage. And I decided to let that house go because the house ended up being worth nothing. When the market went down, the house went down too and it was just worth nothing. . . . I paid close to 2 million dollars for the house and I decided to just let it go, give it back to the bank. It wasn’t a situation where they came and took it from me. I felt like I didn’t want to pay that much money a month for a house that I’m never at. I was never at the house, I was always on the road touring . . .
The rap star, who bought the home under the name Hakeem Seriki Millionaire Mindframe Trust (Hakeem Seriki is his real name), actually paid $2.125 million for the property in 2006. TMZ reports the home was foreclosed on after the owner failed to make several payments. The 5-bedroom, 5 1/2-bath house on an acre-plus corner lot may have been “worth nothing” to him, but the bank will likely be able to squeeze a fair bit of money out of it:
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Read more about: 77382, Carlton Woods, Foreclosures, Homes for Sale, The Woodlands
Comment of the Day: Why We Moved Up to The Woodlands
“My mom moved to Afton Oaks as a child & went to Lamar. I grew up in the Galleria area & my family now lives in TW because we work out of our homes and, when that’s the case, TW becomes the more rational place to raise a family. The air is cleaner, the free schools better; the city has been officially declared bike friendly, and the 160 miles of paths are great for a runner like me. I really don’t want to spend $300,000 over 12 years sending my children to private and then never be able to retire. Sometimes as a native Houstonian who lived in H-Town — Galleria, Rice Military, downtown loft — for much, much longer than we have lived here, this back-and forth is tiresome. “Chains” up here include Hubbell & Hudson, 1252, and the G’s, and those who tend to blindly diss TW are simply ignorant. So; fine; I’m glad we’re getting a TJ. Houston’s going to be getting one too.” [M77002, commenting on Here’s Where the First Trader Joe’s Is Going — in The Woodlands]