Tag: Grocery Stores

Lancaster Place
08/02/10 11:51am

Is This Your Montrose Supermarket on Stilts? A South Beach Model for the Wilshire Village H-E-B

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Proposed Developments, Retail
23 Comments

KHOU reporter Tiffany Craig says her news team “did a little digging” and has discovered that one of the design options H-E-B is considering for its new Montrose store across from Fiesta at the corner of West Alabama and Dunlavy is “similar to” Carlos Zapata’s famous Publix supermarket in South Beach — aka “the Mothership.” That’s good to hear, because as we all know since about 1987 all new buildings built in Houston have been required to look kinda like some more famous structures from somewhere else.

But Zapata’s 12-year-old Publix by the Bay is an actual 50,000-sq.-ft. grocery store, with carts and ramps and everything. The parking is above the store — on 2 levels:

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Comments
07/23/10 9:52pm

Comment of the Day: Wilshire Village Park Contributions from the Great Unwashed

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Lancaster Place, Montrose, Parks, Quicklink
No Comments

COMMENT OF THE DAY: WILSHIRE VILLAGE PARK CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE GREAT UNWASHED “This seems like a potentially great corporate/community partnership. It’s not chump change, but it can be done. I hope the Montrose land Defense Coalition can get it together and do the fund-raising. I, for one, am willing to forgo my soap and patchouli budget for a month and instead dedicate those funds to this cause.” [RWB, commenting on H-E-B Looking for $2 to $3 Million for a 2-Acre Montrose Park]

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Lancaster Place
07/23/10 10:39am

H-E-B Looking for $2 to $3 Million for a 2-Acre Montrose Park

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Montrose, Parking, Parks, Proposed Developments, Retail
68 Comments

H-E-B Houston division president Scott McClelland tells the Chronicle‘s Mike Morris what he’s been telling members of the Montrose Land Defense Coalition for several months: That the grocery company is willing to include a 2-acre park adjacent to its planned Montrose store on the site of the former Wilshire Village apartments at the corner of West Alabama and Dunlavy — but only if community fundraisers can come up with “some offset” of the $2 to $3 million in extra costs required. “I’m not saying it has to be dollar-for-dollar,” McClelland says. “If we get close to raising that kind of money, we’ll find a way to do it. But if we can’t raise any money, it’d be tough for me to justify putting a park in.”

The company plans to have its new store back up to West Alabama and face south. If enough money can be raised, McClelland says the store can be raised — on stilts, so parking can fit underneath. That would leave room for a 2-acre park on the site’s south end. The “H-E-B on stilts” plan would also include space for a farmers market. Without the extra funds, that park area would be used for parking instead — though mature trees on the south portion of the property would still remain.

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East Downtown
07/16/10 7:08pm

Coming to the Street That Warehouse Live Built: An EaDo Corner Grocery

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Openings and Closings, Retail
4 Comments

A 3,500-sq.-ft. grocery store called Epicurean Express will open next month across the street from live-music showcase Warehouse Live in East Downtown. It’ll fit next to Cork Soakers Wine Bar — which opened earlier this year — in a sixties-vintage strip center at the corner of St. Emanuel and Rusk that used to house a massage parlor. (The PODS pod in the photo above is in front of the market space, at 2018 Rusk.) Both the grocery and the wine bar, the renovation of the strip center, and Lucky’s Pub across the street (next door to Warehouse Live) are the work of corner entrepreneur Anthony Wegmann. Wegmann says he’s still looking for other businesses for the strip center’s remaining 3,500 sq. ft.

Wegmann’s publicist says he’s hoping Epicurean Express will be “more appealing than an access road gas station corner mart.” It’ll sell fresh produce, meats, spices, and cleaning supplies, among other things. A coffee bar will be included when it opens; prepared meals are scheduled to arrive in the fall.

Photo: Swamplot inbox

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Houston Heights
07/02/10 11:07pm

Swamplot Street Sleuths: Let Kroger Come Over

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Redevelopment, Retail, Shopping Centers
1 Comment

Got a question about something going on in your neighborhood you’d like Swamplot to answer? Sorry, we can’t help you. But if you ask real nice and include a photo or 2 with your request, maybe the Swamplot Street Sleuths can! Who are they? Other readers, just like you, ready to demonstrate their mad skillz in hunting down stuff like this:

  • Houston Heights: Is the Kroger on 20th St. at Yale poised to take over the space next door Walgreens is vacating? Walgreens has a new building across the street under construction. Longtime reader kjb434 sees signs of redevelopment in the Weingarten-owned Heights Plaza Shopping Center the drug store chain is leaving behind: “I don’t have hard evidence, but I hear just as much from some friends in commercial real estate and from workers at the Kroger on 11th st. From what I gather, it’ll be a Signature Kroger and the Marketplace version that is currently at 11th.”

We’ll post any more reader questions we get on Tuesday. Send us what you’ve got before then!

Photo of Kroger, 239 W. 20th St.: Swamplot inbox

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Houston Heights
06/29/10 9:07am

Swamplot Street Sleuths: That Other Kroger in the Heights

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Retail, Shopping Centers
25 Comments

Got an answer to this reader question? Or just want to be a sleuth for Swamplot? Here’s your chance! Add your report in a comment, or send a note to our tipline.

  • Houston Heights: Just one lead this time, but it should be easy enough for some of you to follow up on: Now that Walgreens is busy getting ready to snuggle up to CVS with its new standalone site going up across the street, what’s going to happen to Weingarten’s Heights Plaza Shopping Center at West 20th and Yale? A reader passes on a rumor heard from an employee at Kroger: that the grocery store is going to take over the entire shopping strip — including the soon-to-be-former Walgreens and at least some of the smaller shops facing Yale. The tip arrives with this request, which we pass off to you: “Can you do some more research on that and confirm?”

Photo of Kroger, 239 W. 20th St.: Swamplot inbox

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Houston Heights
06/15/10 11:45am

Grocery Shopping Sounds

by
Quicklink, Retail
18 Comments

GROCERY SHOPPING SOUNDS After visiting the newly renovated Heights Kroger on Shepherd at 11th St., John Whiteside decides he likes what he hears better at the Heights Fiesta on 14th and Studewood: “Because it’s an old store, they play music. Kroger, on the other hand, plays a constant soundtrack of ads. As you stroll along through the aisles, you are bombarded by loud, insistent messages telling you what to buy, and insisting that the latest high fructose treats are really healthy for your kids because they were once in the same room as an apple, and that the new soup packaged so you can consume it with one hand in your SUV while making phone calls is just what a busy person like you needs, and so on. And it’s all punctuated with boops and beeps designed to keep you from easily tuning it out, and which often make me think I’m getting text messages.” [By the Bayou; previously on Swamplot]

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Comments
06/10/10 2:47pm

Comment of the Day: The Fine Art of Grocery Bag Architecture

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Quicklink, Retail
28 Comments

COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE FINE ART OF GROCERY BAG ARCHITECTURE “I will freely admit to being a bag snob, I was a bag boy at HEB in high school. Growing up in HEB’s hometown of San Antonio spoiled me as far as grocery shopping/bagging is concerned. Moving to Houston was quite the eye-opener. HEB sent all new hires to Bag School for two entire shifts to learn the obvious (no heavy cans on top of bread, no bleach bagged with grapes) and the not so obvious (creating walls, stacking soda bottles sideways). Most of the baggers were high school students and hadn’t had to buy our own groceries and therefore had no reason to care about how this stuff was placed in a grocery bag. (Most high school baggers I worked with also hadn’t had any pain in their life since the doctor slapped them on the ass, but that’s a different rant.) The Bag School taught a necessary skill for a vital employee: the last employee a customer has contact with before leaving the store. . . . Yes, I will come right out and say it: I’m one of those freaks who politely but firmly lies to the baggers, “no thank you, this is going to 2 different houses and I need to separate them.” Let your grocery bagging OCD freak flag fly.” [Matt, commenting on Heights Kroger: Okay, Now We’re Really Big]

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Houston Heights
06/09/10 11:15am

Heights Kroger: Okay, Now We’re Really Big

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Redevelopment, Renovations, Retail, Shopping Centers, Timbergrove Manor
77 Comments

It was only closed for a few evenings during construction, but the Merchants Park Kroger at 11th and North Shepherd in the Heights is marking today as its grand re-opening. Work on the project began 13 months ago. A new section of the store, which was expanded by 39,184 sq. ft., opened last October. Today, all the expansions and renovations on the 24-hour market are complete. Total tally: 88,988 sq. ft.

What’s new? A Starbucks with free wi-fi; a “Kitchen Place” featuring small appliances, cookware, and dinnerware; and the now-de-rigueur drive-thru pharmacy. Plus: an “open-air” seafood market, an order-on-the-computer deli kiosk, a “Cheese Shoppe” with more than 300 cheeses, and an Artisan Bread gallery that features store-made tortillas in your five favorite flavors: white, wheat, butter, salsa and cinnamon sugar.

There’s more:

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Katy
05/21/10 9:38am

Where Local Fruits and Vegetables Will Be Hanging Out in Katy

by
Openings and Closings, Retail
5 Comments

“We had gone to many places calling themselves farmers markets but their produce was coming in from California and Florida,” Susan Becker tells the Chronicle‘s Samira Rizvi. The 3,800-sq.-ft. Katy Fresh Produce Market she and her husband opened this week at 5026 East Third St. in Katy calls itself a farmers market; it’ll be open every day except Tuesday and “at least half” of the produce will be from local farmers, reports abc13’s Kevin Quinn, who spots bell peppers from Alvin, green beans from Cat Spring, and peaches from Fairfield (the city, not the subdivision).

Photo: Katy Fresh Produce Market

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Discovery Green
05/05/10 12:11pm

Swamplot Award Winners Converge as Phoenicia Moves in Next to Discovery Green

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Downtown, Openings and Closings, Retail
30 Comments

The owners of the international foods emporium voted best grocery store in the city by Swamplot readers last year have announced they’ll be opening a second location Downtown, across the street from Discovery Green — whose opening day was voted the Best Moment in Houston Real Estate in the Swamplot Awards the previous year. What Swamplot Award-winner mashup will they think of next?

The new 28,000-sq.-ft Phoenicia Specialty Foods — smaller than the 55,000-sq.-ft. store on Westheimer near Kirkwood — is expected to open at the end of this year across McKinney St. from the Downtown park, in the ground floor of the One Park Place apartment tower. But park visitors will likely have to walk around the building to get their freekeh on: The store’s entrance will face Austin St.

We know what you’re wondering — will the pita be floating down from the ceiling on a conveyor belt Downtown too?

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New Construction
04/21/10 6:14pm

Joe V’s Smart Shop on Antoine: H-E-B’s Prototype Big Box Grocery Store

by
Northwest Houston, Retail
35 Comments

H-E-B is testing a new no-frills warehouse-style grocery concept with a new store set to open early next month at 12035 Antoine, about a mile and a half north of the Beltway at the corner of Veterans Memorial. The prototype Joe V’s Smart Shop will be nearly twice the size of the typical H-E-B Pantry, reports the Chronicle‘s David Kaplan:

Smaller than a full-size H-E-B, Joe V’s will carry about 9,000 items, compared with a traditional supermarket, which has about 37,000.

Joe V’s might have five ketchups, while a full-size H-E-B would have 25, [Houston VP Armando] Perez said. The Joe V’s ketchups will include well-known brands and H-E-B private labels.

Joe V’s will have produce and self-serve meat, seafood and bakery departments. The biggest savings will often be in the grocery and general merchandise sections, Perez said.

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Development Regulations
04/20/10 9:05am

A Wilshire Village Dead-End Variance for the New Montrose H-E-B

by
Lancaster Place, Proposed Developments, Retail
4 Comments

The new H-E-B at “Lancaster Center” makes its first appearance at the 7.68-acre Dunlavy and West Alabama corner lot. Any neighbors want to send us the plat drawings they should have received in the mail by now? An interested observer sends in this snapshot and comments:

Some time in the last few days, a “Notice of Variance Request” was posted on the old Wilshire Village / soon-to-be HEB property, for the apparent purpose of dealing with “cul-de-sac standards”. One assumes this has something to do with the current dead-ends of Sul Ross and Branard into property–but what, exactly? Does this mean that part of the property is going to be used to construct cul-de-sacs? Does this mean that the Montrose Land Defense coalition might get thrown a minor bone or two in the way of public green space?

Photo: Swamplot inbox

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Commercial Real Estate
04/05/10 11:17am

H-E-B Announces That the Buffalo Grille Is Moving — Somewhere

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Leasing, Openings and Closings, Parking, Restaurants, Retail, Shopping Centers, Strip Centers, West University
21 Comments

A spokesperson for Buffalo Grille parking-lot tenant H-E-B confirms that the popular West U brunch-and-lunch spot will be moving from its current location on Bissonnet at Buffalo Speedway after its lease expires next year, “to a new location yet to be determined.” But one possible new location for the Buffalo Grille — a portion of the former JMH Market on Rice Blvd. — was just snapped up by the owners of Thompson + Hansen Nursery and Tiny Boxwood’s. The Buffalo Grille’s John McAleer tells the West University Examiner

“Right now…pickings are very slim. Any vacant space in the West U area, or the closest you can get to it, we’re looking at it. We have a year left, and we’re looking at that perfect location to find.”

How awkward: McAleer’s parents, Mac and Betty McAleer, “are part of the management team that owns the land on which the Buffalo Grille and H-E-B are situated,” the Examiner‘s Charlotte Aguilar and Steve Mark explain. And Molina’s Restaurant — displaced from the shopping center a few years ago when H-E-B redeveloped it — is still looking for its own replacement West U location.

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Comments
03/16/10 2:39pm

Comment of the Day: Montrose Ain’t Like It Used To Be

by
Montrose, Neighborhood Disputes, Proposed Developments, Quicklink
7 Comments

COMMENT OF THE DAY: MONTROSE AIN’T LIKE IT USED TO BE “What’s with the petitions and the rainbows and unicorns? Renderings? Real hippys would squat on the land, throw up some tents to sell their bead jewelry and homemade hippy stuff until the police and/or bulldozers come. 21st century Montrose is full of pussies. 20 bucks sez the guy with the hearts on his sign is in line on opening day ready to fill his hemp messenger bag with organic chicken breasts and a sustainably farmed pomengranate flavored something or other at the overpriced new neighborhood-centric HEB.” [meatsack, commenting on What the Montrose Land Defense Coalition Really Wants To See at Wilshire Village]

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