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    Real Estate Round-up

    Houston's Top 10 shopping center additions: Stores that are transforming spaces

    Ralph Bivins
    Jul 19, 2011 | 12:57 pm
    • The arrival of Tootsies placed a stamp of approval on West Ave for retailers.
      Photo by Clifford Pugh
    • With its new store on Waugh Drive, just south of Allen Parkway, Whole Foods madegrocery shopping inside the Loop a lot better.
    • Angelika died last summer, but the space will not stay dark forever. Aneight-screen Sundance will open there at the end of the year.
    • As if Whole Foods wasn’t enough to spiff up Waugh Drive, here comes TonyMandola’sm a 6,700-square-foot restaurant with 225 seats.
      Photo by Shelby Hodge
    • Photo by Fulton Davenport: PWL Studio

    Attention shoppers: Here are my top 10 additions to the Houston retail scene.

    We’ve made it halfway through the year and although there aren’t any more Gallerias being built, there is some new activity in shopping center development — places for fun and enjoyment.

     

      One of the biggest trends making an impact on Houston’s retail center market is what real estate professionals call “backfilling” of vacant space. 

    This list includes new stores, restaurants, entertainment venues, new construction projects and proposed deals — an assortment of happenings that will make Houston a more interesting place to spend money. After all, there are only 150-something shopping days till Christmas.

    1. Tootsies. The upscale fashion apparel store relocated from Highland Village to West Ave, the mixed-use project at the corner of Kirby and Westheimer. The arrival of Tootsies placed a stamp of approval on West Ave for retailers.

    West Ave attracted renters to its apartments and diners to its restaurants. But Tootsies could be the icebreaker West Ave needs to elevate itself to a prime shopping destination.

    2. Whole Foods. With its new store on Waugh Drive, just south of Allen Parkway, Whole Foods made grocery shopping inside the Loop a lot better. H-E-B will respond with a Montrose-area outlet at West Alabama and Dunlavy.

    3. Sundance Cinema. Everybody was amazed a few years back when Angelika movie theater opened at Bayou Place in downtown Houston. That Angelika died in the summer of 2010, but its space will not stay dark forever. As first reported in CultureMap, an eight-screen Sundance will open there at the end of the year.

    4. Star Cinema Grill. The dinner-and-a-movie concept arrives in the southwestern suburb of Missouri City. This a nine-screen version of the perfect date night built into a former Alberstons store at 4811 Highway 6 South.

    5. Premier Cinemas. Movie theaters must be a great way to re-purpose vacant retail boxes. Premier put 20 screens into a vacant 69,000-square-foot JC Penney in Greenspoint Mall.

    6. Carl’s Jr. Hungry? Poor? This California-based fast-food merchant continues to add new outlets in the Houston area for quick and affordable grub. Drive-through for burgers, fried chicken sandwiches and late-night cholesterol.

    7. Flying Saucer Draught Emporium is bringing its extensive menu of quality brews to the southwest suburbs. The Saucer will be drawing the draughts soon at the Sugar Land Town Square in Fort Bend County.

    8. Tanger Outlets. The outlet mall format turns on a lot of shoppers. This proposed mall, to be built off of Interstate 45 in Texas City, will have 90 stores in 350,000 square feet. The project, which could be open next year, is being developed by Tanger Factory Outlet and Simon Property Group — a pair of outlet mall pros.

    9. Container Store. The premier retailer for outfitting a freshman’s dorm room opened a 34,000-square-foot store in The Woodlands. Not that huge of a deal, unless you consider the fact that the Container Store went into a former Circuit City. The demise of Circuit City left a lot of vacant space around town. But it has been steadily refilled with other stores, like the Container folks.

    10. Tony Mandola’s. As if Whole Foods wasn’t enough to spiff up Waugh Drive, here comes Mandola’s eatery — a 6,700-square-foot restaurant with 225 seats. Mandola’s was a fixture in the River Oaks Shopping Center for years and his new facility opened with great fanfare.

     Trend Summary

    One of the biggest trends making an impact on Houston’s retail center market is what real estate professionals call “backfilling” of vacant space, according to a report by the Weitzman Group, a realty firm that specializes in retail centers.

    Space that was vacated by Circuit City, Linen 'N Things and other departed retailers is gradually being refilled with new stores. There are still some other vacancies to come — resulting from problems such as the ones facing Blockbuster and the liquidating Borders. But the worst is over.

    Weitzman reports that there has been little change in occupancy rates in the citywide statistics for Houston. But there’s no doubt that the market for retail centers has improved from the dark year of 2009, when stores vacated a ton of space.

    So far this year, about 500,000 square feet of empty retail space in Houston has been filled, according to the CB Richard Ellis realty company. That is tremendous improvement over what was recorded at this time last year, when more space was being emptied than was being leased, CB Richard Ellis says.

    The key metrics here: Only a tiny amount of new retail space has been built in Houston over the last year or two. And the Houston economy is still in a modest recovery as a steady number of new jobs are being added. That means the retail center market is on a path for improvement.

     Ralph Bivins, editor of Realty News Report, is a former president of the National Association of Real Estate Editors.

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    your friends and neighbors

    Pioneering East End development brings cohousing to Houston

    Jef Rouner
    Jul 7, 2025 | 12:15 pm
    Digital image of a a finished cohousing development with people in the foreground.
    Render provided by CoHousing Houston
    A digital rendering of the finished CoHousing Houston.

    Houston's East End neighborhood will soon welcome a bold new experiment in housing in the next couple of months, one dedicated to communal space and curing the epidemic of isolation plaguing modern America.

    Called CoHousing Houston, the development occupies a property at 114 Delmar St. that consists of 33, individually-owned units built around a central courtyard. This layout isn't much different from a modern apartment complex, but there are architectural deviations and governing principles that gently nudge the residents toward in-person interactions.

    One is the common house, a massive gathering space, kitchen area, and work station that serves as a community center and event hall. While the individual units do have their own kitchens and bedrooms, they are short on extra rooms. This encourages people to move their hobbies and activities to the common house or to the shared outdoor porches and balconies when the weather is nice.

    The idea of communal housing is as old as humanity itself and is practiced by groups as different as hippy communes and the U.S. Army. However, few Americans live in communal housing after they reach adulthood, preferring privacy and a large space to call their own. CoHousing Houston is aiming to be the best of both worlds.

    One resident is Kelli Soika, a married mother of three who lived in a similar cohousing unit in Colorado before moving to Houston in 2018. She found the cohousing model incredibly liberating, and worked to create the first one in the Bayou City.

    "You have this great place to solve problems you didn’t even know you know you had," she tells CultureMap. "I would have to go to the grocery store with the three kids, and it was hard. Now, I can ask a neighbor to watch the girls for an hour. I hear it’s like living in a small town in the past, though I'm not old enough to remember that. It's the kind of place where if you leave the door open, someone will check to make sure you're okay. In a regular house, you could fall down and it might be days before someone found you."

    Soika emphasized the power of community connection. Surrounded by multi-generational households that are funneled into the communal spaces by design, she can draw on the innovation of young couples or the wisdom of the elderly. With one kid starting college, it's nice for her to be able to talk to someone close by who has gone through the same thing. Her husband can drop into an evening bike riding group whenever he wants without having to arrange various schedules. In her opinion, little neighborly touches like that are worth the slight loss of privacy or space that are inherent to cohousing.

    "If the power is out and you don't know what’s going on at CenterPoint, you've got a group going through it with you," she says. "These things keep happening, and when I moved into cohousing, it's just not a crisis because you've got other people to help you and be with you in it."

    Isolation and loneliness is a major problem in America, studies suggest. Increased workloads and the explosion of social media have led to a sharp decline in time spent in "third places," locations that are not home or work. According to some estimates, people stopped going to third places as much as 37 percent between 2014 and 2017, and that was before COVID sent people into deeper isolation. In Houston, soaring temperatures and poor public transit keep some people out of parks and other outdoor activities even as the city invests heavily in park improvement. Some activities such as pickleball and live-action gaming centers have picked up the slack, but these still involve planning that many tired workers simply don't have the energy for.

    In that world, cohousing seems like a viable alternative to increase social engagement, though it may be too big a change for Americans, who are famously individualistic.

    Soika says that there are weekly meetings in the common house to deal with issues that affect the entire campus, such as parking disputes and insurance. Residents own their $300,000 to $525,000 homes, but there is still an HOA, and governance is democratic. CoHousing Houston tries to make sure that the majority of people can still attend and have their voices heard in the regular meetings. Those disinclined to group gatherings can still participate in small groups that handle specific matters, but like all democracy it involves more work than simply owning your own home. There's also the worry that such a governing structure tends to empower people who have time and resources to attend meetings, such as single income households.

    "You don’t want to have the decisions dominated by people who have managed to dominate the meeting structures," says Soika. "We have rounds where we laboriously go through each person and have them talk about it. It helps the quieter ones. We want everyone to be heard."

    Another concern is safety. Soika was unable to say of there was any kind of provision for what to do if a resident became a problem, such as exhibiting violent behavior against other residents.

    "I guess we would call the police," she says. Having lived in cohousing since 2012, she says she's never come across such a situation.

    CoHousing Houston is expected to open fully this fall. Soika already lives on site, and most of the units in the $300,000 range have been sold. Units in the $450,000-525,000 range remain available. Interested buyers can find more information at CoHousingHouston.com.

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