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?
COMMENT OF THE DAY: FEELING THE ENERGY ALL AROUND HOUSTON “I see nothing wrong with XOM making the move to the Woodlands area. It now creates a third energy corridor in the Houston metro area, and a different environment in which to recruit. CBD has Chevron, BG, Shell, El Paso, Enterprise, etc. Woodlands now will have Anadarko & XOM. BP and service companies are located on the west side. Now you have can have real options on living close to where you work — and the type of lifestyle that you want.” [DJ, commenting on Urban Escape: An ExxonMobil Video Tour and Explanation for Its Enormous New Houston Forest Campus]
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:
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]
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:
COMMENT OF THE DAY: HOME DECOR BY THE NUMBERS 
“I count eight framed jerseys. But I guess if you do the math — one jersey per 1150 sq ft — it’s not so bad.” [Carol, commenting on On the Market: Woodlands House of 1000 Pigments]
No faux finishing technique — or potential painting surface — was spared in the latest redo of this 21-year-old 9,181-sq.-ft. Woodlands mansion in Grogan’s Point. You’ll count 6 or 7 bedrooms, 8 bathrooms, a study, and gameroom, all with walls carefully protected by multiple coats of carefully splotched pigment. Those finishing touches put the many wall colors of this home beyond the reach of description.
PLEASE BRING YOUR FINAL PURCHASES TO CONROE FORÂ CHECKOUT 
Any plans to rebuild the Garden Ridge store at the northern border of The Woodlands on I-45 near Hwy. 242 — destroyed by fire today — will likely get careful scrutiny: “As one of the city’s ‘big box’ stores, Garden Ridge straddles the city limits between Conroe and The Woodlands Township. The cash registers are located in Conroe, the result of an annexation agreement reached between the neighboring communities in 2006.” [Montgomery County Courier] Photo: KHOU
PINKBERRY HOUSTON CAMPAIGN: WEBSTER AND THE WOODLANDS FIRST Beachhead for the inevitable local invasion of second-wave frozen-yogurt pioneer Pinkberry: across I-45 from Baybrook Mall in the Baybrook Passage Shopping Center. The location, at 19325 Gulf Fwy., is scheduled to open on September 30th. The second of the dozen spots planned for the greater Houston area by the regional franchisee will be somewhere in The Woodlands, but won’t open until next year. [Houston Business Journal] Update, 11:30 am: That Woodlands location will be in The Woodlands Mall.
Posted on HAIF: images from earlier this month of the empty but almost ready-to-open H-E-B at 3601 FM 1488 in The Woodlands. At 104,000 sq. ft., the North Woodlands Market will register as the biggest of the 4 H-E-Bs in the area. Inside, reports Chris, the cameraphone photographer, everything will be bigger than usual. Alas, no closeups of the guacamole bar. A similar layout and format is expected at the Sugar Land store scheduled to open in September.
H&M IN HOUSTON: ALL IN THE MALLS Swedish clothing retailer H&M is in talks to lease space at the Galleria, in the Memorial City Mall, and The Woodlands Mall for its first 3 Houston-area locations, leasing-agent sources tell Heather Staible. According to the timetable given to her, the Galleria location would be the first to open — in early 2012. [Culturemap; previously on Swamplot]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE VIRGINIANS ARE COMING! ” . . . the article doesn’t say they are not moving people from other areas of the country. It says they have not decided. I have personally seen internal memos that tell their employees they are consolidating Houston campuses before they consider moving other offices around the country to this campus and that it would be 2015 before that would happen. I don’t think it is a stretch to read into this that they will be moving other areas of the country to this campus. As a Realtor I can tell you that people from their Fairfax campus have already begun buying homes in The Woodlands … somebody is pretty confident of being moved if they are doing that. I’m guessing they’re trying to avoid employees in those areas leaving (rather than move) before XOM is ready for them to.” [David Hageman, commenting on Welcome to the Land of ExxonMobil: A Tour of the Company’s New North Houston Campus]
BREW LOW, SELL HIGH 
A Woodlands entrepreneur plans to open one of those beer bars where the prices fluctuate like a stabilized stock market — near Hubbell & Hudson at 24 Waterway Square next month. Owner Steve Jackson got the idea after he visited the Berliner Republik bar in Germany about a decade ago. But his description makes it sound like prices at his new establishment, which he’s calling The Exchange, will only be adjusted every 20 minutes: “We’ll have monitors and a ticker throughout the bar with a countdown clock,” he tells the HBJ‘s Allison Wollam. “Our patrons will have to decide if they want to buy the beer before the 20-minute mark, or take a chance to see if the price will go up or down.” If all goes well, Jackson says, he’s going to want to open five additional locations elsewhere in the Houston area. [Houston Business Journal] Photo of pricing screen at Die Berliner Republik: Beatrice Obwocha
Property-tax assessments dropped overall in Harris County this year, but a reader in Montgomery County writes in to brag about the remarkable rise in value her small neighborhood in The Woodlands experienced over the same period: Assessments for a group of 42 homes in the Village of Panther Creek went up by a minimum of 80 percent over last year’s values. To get a taste of the boom, our reader suggests, try a search for “Wedgewood Glen” on the MCAD website. The datasheets for any of the properties listed will show the appraisal history. “With increases like that, The Woodlands may be the hottest real estate market in the country,” she writes. And she says she’s ready to sell her 30-something-year-old home now — if she can get anyone to buy her home at the price the county assessor says it’s worth.
