08/16/18 2:00pm

Petco, Michaels, Bed Bath and Beyond, and a big Dick’s Sporting Goods store are among the retailers now lining up for spots in Newquest Properties‘ new Grand-Parkway-adjacent shopping center dubbed The Grand at Aliana. They’ll be buffered from the highway by a roughly 2,400-car-parking lot and a front-line of fast food restaurants. The whole Grand plan hits the Houston Planning Commission’s desk later this afternoon at City Hall Annex, 20 miles away from where the development would be built off W. Airport Blvd.

The map at top shows it vying for attention up there amid the blue jigsaw grid of proposed and recently-built neighborhoods that keep appearing around the highway. In orange is the shopping center’s namesake, the 2,8000-house-and-counting Aliana community that wraps it to the east.

Viewed from the east in the conceptual shot below, you can see some of those houses in the foreground:

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Grandstanding
10/26/17 10:30am

OCCASIONAL HAZARDS OF A FEEDER ROAD STRIP CENTER The Shogun Japanese Grill and Sushi Bar in a strip center fronting the northbound feeder of the Grand Parkway in Richmond opened its storefront involuntarily this morning to accept an oncoming 18-wheeler. The Fort Bend County Sheriff’s office has sent out the photo shown here of the restaurant at 7417 W. Grand Parkway South, showing the truck swallowed completely by the restaurant. The adjacent Gossip nail salon was also damaged after the truck broke through the interior wall separating the 2 businesses. According to the Sheriff’s office, the truck was carrying hazmat gasses; the words “nitrogen refrigerated liquid” are visible on the back of the trailer in the photo. The driver is in critical condition, and 3 people who were in the building suffered “minor injuries,” according to the report. The building has been evacuated. Update, 11:45 am: More from the Sheriff’s office: “The driver of the 18-wheeler has passed. We believe the crash was caused by a medical issue he was experiencing.” [FBCSO] Photo: Fort Bend County Sheriff’s Office.

02/10/17 4:45pm

Urban Bricks Pizza Co., 5650 West Grand Parkway South #100, Richmond, TX 77407

The finishing touches have been applied to the first Houston-area outpost of Urban Bricks Pizza Co., in time for the location’s end-of-January grand opening. The Boerne-based pizza place has squeezed in next to Zesty Cleaners and James Avery in the newest piece of the growing strip center puzzle known as the Shops at Bella Terra, itself sandwiched between the Lakes of Bella Terra and Parkway Lakes subdivisions south of the EZ TAG-only intersection of Westpark Tollway and the Grand Parkway. The most recent add-on to the center is near the bottom left corner in the detention-pond-spangled siteplan below:

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Lakeside Pizza Views
10/22/09 11:47pm

Who won that Rice Design Alliance membership?

First, your guesses in this week’s game: Four of you guessed Sugar Land; 3 Hunters Creek, Tanglewood, and River Oaks. There were 2 each for Memorial, Bayou Woods or Sherwood Forest, Piney Point Village, Katy, Magnolia, Sweetwater, Bellaire, and The Woodlands. Plus individual votes for “Memorial/Beltway 8,” “somewhere off Memorial Dr. near Voss,” “south of Memorial Dr. between Post Oak and Voss,” Memorial and Dairy Ashford, Crestwood, Glen Cove, Kingwood, Sugar Lakes, Venetian Estates, “the Peninsulas in Oyster Creek,” Pecan Grove in Richmond, Tomball, Indian Trail, Rivercrest, Augusta Pines, Homewoods, Tall Timbers, Mt. Belvieu, Cinco Ranch, “along the Bay Oaks golf course,” Camp Logan, Royal Oaks, Crosby, “off 249,” Pinehurst, “Champions area,” FM 1960, Northgate Forest, west Friendswood, Brazoria County, Lake Jackson, West Columbia, “the 290/Highway 6/1960 area,” Pearland, “along Buffalo Bayou near the Houston Country Club,” and “Holly Creek, west of Tomball.”

That one-year individual membership in the RDA goes to this week’s hardest guesser, Matt Mystery, who mentioned no fewer than 15 different communities in the course of 7 separate entries — including one that’s very close to the actual location:

Sugar Land. It could be Sweetwater or possibly Sugar Lakes/Venetian Estates. Or maybe The Peninsulas in Oyster Creek. Then there’s Pecan Grove in Richmond. So many subdivisions. So many areas. It just has that Tanglewood look. And it’s 9 pm on Thursday and it’s still a mystery.

Matt Mystery happens to be the same matt who won last week’s contest. Congratulations!

A lot of great guesses in there from the rest of you, too!

How about the deets?

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05/29/09 5:14pm

NEW FAT KROGER TWINS The largest Krogers in Texas will be opening late this year, 10 miles apart: The 125,000-square-foot Kroger Marketplace stores, which will both feature the same layout, will be located in Brazos Town Center in Rosenberg and at Waterside Marketplace in Richmond. . . . [Kroger’s Gary] Huddleston says the Brazos Town Center store, located at U.S. Highway 59 and FM 762 in Rosenberg, will primarily serve the Richmond/Rosenberg market, while the Waterside Marketplace location, at Grand Parkway and Mason Road in Richmond, will serve the Katy market. Both Kroger Marketplace stores will feature a Fred Meyer Jewelers’ store as well as a large home furnishing section with Ashley Furniture.” [Houston Business Journal]