BELLAIRE, Texas – H-E-B has announced plans to close its Bellaire store on March 13 to demolish the existing building and construct the grocer’s first two-story store in the Houston area. The move reflects H-E-B’s growing interest in multi-level formats that can better serve dense, high-value urban neighborhoods where land is limited and costly.
Cyndy Garza Roberts, an H-E-B spokesperson, confirmed that construction is scheduled to begin March 17, 2017. The new store will sit on a 3.055-acre site near the intersection of Bissonnet Street and Cedar, just west of South Rice Avenue. H-E-B expects the two-story store to measure approximately 70,000 square feet and to open in late 2017.
The design includes an upper-level parking deck with 82 spaces, plus ground-level parking and street spaces to provide a total of roughly 312 parking places. That exceeds Bellaire’s parking requirement for the project, which the city calculated at 297 spaces based on its ratio of five spaces per 1,000 square feet. The store will include a pharmacy, bakery, floral department and food-preparation areas, alongside a sales floor and an administrative mezzanine.
H-E-B is aiming to use the two-story format to expand into upscale urban submarkets where development sites are scarce. The company operates several multi-level stores in Mexico and recently opened a multi-level location at 1610 Nogalitos Street in San Antonio, demonstrating experience with stacked-store concepts.
The City of Bellaire held a public hearing in August 2016 at the Bellaire Civic Center so residents could learn how a two-story grocery with upper-level parking and shopping would operate. Following H-E-B’s announcement last summer, an adjacent strip center was purchased and its tenants have since relocated to clear the property for demolition. Bellaire Development Services Director John McDonald noted the company plans to build to the lot line, with ramp access to the second level at the complex’s northeast corner.
Architectural plans call for a mix of materials—metal awnings, metal screens, precast concrete and masonry—accenting a red, black and beige exterior palette. The design will present a 50-foot elevation facing Rice Avenue and prominent H-E-B signage featuring white letters on a red background with surrounding glazing. Internally, the layout accommodates a sales floor of about 52,833 square feet, an administrative mezzanine of 2,319 square feet, a pharmacy of 2,098 square feet and roughly 2,064 square feet dedicated to food preparation.
Terra Associates, Inc., represented by Lyle Henkel, P.E., submitted an application reflecting an expanded building footprint and reconfigured delivery docks. Early project presentations had included additional landscaping, trees along Bissonnet and greenspace, elements that were less visible in the later design. In response, H-E-B has since submitted a tree disposition plan to the Bellaire Development Services department. Bellaire is an independent municipality located near Houston’s West Loop.
Bellaire City Manager Paul Hofmann has said H-E-B continues to indicate it is close to its original schedule, meaning demolition should begin shortly and construction will proceed as planned with the goal of opening in fall 2017, although no exact opening date has been set.
In the past year H-E-B opened four new stores in the greater Houston area, including locations in Kingwood, Clear Lake, the Aliana master-planned community off the Grand Parkway, and Magnolia. The Bellaire project represents a new direction for the company in Houston as it tests multi-level stores to better fit tight urban sites while maintaining the product and service mix customers expect.
Feb. 6, 2017 Realty News Report Copyright 2017