H-E-B has announced its first store opening date: Sept. 21 in Frisco. Plano is expected to open this fall.

We’ve put together an updated map of properties H-E-B owns and what we know about the company’s real estate plans.

Stores on the way

Plano and Frisco: Both stores will have gasoline pumps in the parking lots and a True Texas BBQ restaurants with drive-throughs. The Frisco store is being built on the northeast corner of Legacy Drive and Main Street. Many of H-E-B’s largest stores have leased spaces inside for facial spas, banks, jewelry retailers and other services. It may start offering Plano and Frisco front-of-store leases soon. In 2021, James Avery opened inside an H-E-B in League City. (For the grocer’s 100th anniversary in 2004, the Kerrville-based jeweler made an H-E-B shopping cart charm.) As more malls close and are redeveloped, there may be more demand for those spaces inside the front of supercenters and supermarkets.

Plano: H-E-B is selling a ground lease for a 1.27-acre pad in its parking lot facing Spring Creek Parkway next to the first H-E-B in Plano. That’s big enough for a building with a drive-through. The rent starts out the first five years at $135,000 a year. The supermarket is under construction on the southwest corner of Preston Road and Spring Creek Parkway.

McKinney: H-E-B’s third announced store is in McKinney on the northeast corner of Custer Road and Eldorado Parkway. It will be 118,000 square feet and the company said it will open in summer 2023. Kroger’s first local Marketplace store built in 2010 is across the street. H-E-B’s True Texas BBQ restaurants, which Texas Monthly has ranked No. 1 in the state for two consecutive years, will be attached to the store. The store will have gasoline pumps and a drive-through pharmacy.

Allen: In June 2022 H-E-B started building a 117,000-square-foot store in Allen east of U.S Highway 75 across from Allen High School on the northwest corner of Exchange Parkway and Greenville Avenue (Highway 5). This is the fourth location announced and will be open in summer 2023. The store’s pharmacy will have a two-lane drive-through. Allen will be the first of its new North Texas stores with its H-E-B Wellness Primary Care Clinic.

Mansfield: H-E-B was moving ahead on plans in Mansfield in 2018, but then put off its development project in the southern Tarrant County suburb. In August, H-E-B said it will build a new store in southeast Tarrant County’s fast-growing town of Mansfield. It will also be the first in the county. The store will be at the corner of U.S. Route 287 and Broad Street, on property that the San Antonio-based retailer already owns. The retailer said a ground breaking will be in early 2023.

Still deciding

When H-E-B set its sights on D-FW 20 years ago, entering with its Central Market stores, it started buying land in North Texas. It decided to prove its new specialty grocery concept in this market and has been successful with six of the 10 Central Markets in D-FW, where the concept is headquartered.

The next two examples illustrate how H-E-B is methodically making new-store decisions and has changed its mind and probably will again.

Grand Prairie: Early on, H-E-B purchased property in Grand Prairie, and the 18-acre parcel at 5325 Lake Ridge Parkway was in the mix. The land, on the southwest corner at Camp Wisdom Road, had a contract that required H-E-B to start building a store within five years. It no longer owns it.

Dallas: For now, H-E-B seems to be focused on building new stores on vacant land, not redeveloping existing buildings, even though it has done that in Dallas twice. It opened Central Market stores in a former Borders bookstore at Preston and Royal and a former Albertsons on West Northwest Highway in 2018. It owns one more vacant building in Lake Highlands.

Lake Highlands: H-E-B owns a 62,645-square-foot vacant store in the northeast Dallas neighborhood of Lake Highlands, but put it up for sale after it bought it in late 2016. The store at 10203 E. Northwest Highway in the Northlake Shopping Center was an Albertsons for many years, then became a Minyard Sun Fresh Market that went out of business. It was in a batch of 168 stores in eight states that the Federal Trade Commission required be sold as part of the Albertsons-Safeway merger. H-E-B also controls the empty convenience store and gasoline pumps on the store’s corner at Ferndale and East Northwest Highway.

What’s next?

As developers start putting together new housing projects, seeking zoning approvals and lining up tenants, H-E-B is a great name to drop.

Frisco: Last year, a zoning request for Four Corners, a 100-acre mixed-use development at the southwest corner of U.S. Highway 380 and FM423 in Frisco, included a site owned by H-E-B. So far, one section has a CVS and apartments built on it. The grocer declined to talk about the site across from the large Windsong Ranch residential development, saying only that it “has a real estate portfolio across North Texas in Dallas, Denton, Tarrant and Collin counties.” H-E-B owns another piece of vacant land in Frisco on Lebanon Road and FM423. The two parcels cover a broad area of Frisco and are about 9 miles northwest and 5 miles southwest of the store it’s building in Frisco.

We can probably expect to see H-E-B’s sites mentioned more often as new neighborhoods are built, and the San Antonio grocer is still buying local real estate and strategically chasing new rooftops. H-E-B also owns land in Wylie, Denton, Bedford and Fort Worth.

Melissa: In March 2022, H-E-B presented plans to city officials to buy 39 acres on the east side of U.S. 75 just north of Highway 121. The land is next to the Buc-ee’s that opened in 2019. The announcement earned chatter on social media that the intersection now just needs a Whataburger and it would be a Texas trifecta.

Forney: This year, it purchased a site in Forney near the intersection of U.S. Highway 80 and FM1641. Kaufman County led the D-FW area with a 40% population increase over the past decade, and was North Texas’ top homebuilding market last year.

Southern Dallas: In January 2022, H-E-B purchased a building at 4101 West Wheatland Road in southern Dallas and near Duncanville and DeSoto. The 58,940-square-foot supermarket years ago was an Albertsons.

Oak Lawn: H-E-B really has been buying property in North Texas for years. It owns commercial properties that form two blocks in Dallas’ Oak Lawn neighborhood along Lemmon Avenue and bordered by Throckmorton Street, Bowser Avenue and Reagan Street.

How about a Joe V’s?

Finally, the largest Texas-based grocery chain doesn’t plan to just add H-E-B and Central Market stores here. While it hasn’t announced specific locations yet for its two other brands, the company has said the expansion will include them. Mi Tienda and Joe V’s Smart Shop could also end up in your neighborhood.

Twitter: @MariaHalkias

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