Plans indicate Trader Joe's would take up part of a 64,000-square-foot former grocery store that closed in early 2020.
It appears that Kingwood will be the next lucky Houston-area neighborhood to get a Trader Joe’s.
The popular Monrovia, California-based grocery store chain has registered a $900,000 building renovation project at 600 Kingwood Drive with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation.
According to the filing, the company plans to start building out 17,180 square feet of vacant space in the Kingwood Commons retail center in June, with completion expected in December. Orange, California-based Kip Klayton Architects is listed as the architect.
TDLR listings are preliminary and are often subject to change.
Trader Joe's would take up part of the 64,000-square-foot former Randalls store that closed in early 2020, just before the Covid-19 pandemic hit.
Neither Trader Joe’s nor the landlord, Stafford-based Dhanani Private Equity Group, would confirm plans for a Kingwood store.
“We are actively looking at hundreds of neighborhoods across the country as we hope to open more new neighborhood stores each year,” Nakia Rhode, public relations manager for Trader Joe’s, said in an email.
The Kingwood store would be Trader Joe’s seventh Houston-area location after the company opened a 10,000-square-foot store in Sugar Land last October.
Other locations include The Woodlands, Montrose, Memorial area, Cinco Ranch and Westchase.
Trader Joe’s routinely ranks among the most popular grocery stores in the United States, though it has slipped in the rankings since taking first place in customer data science company Dunnhumby's Retailer Preference Index in 2018 and 2019.
This year, however, it stopped the slide and jumped nine spots to No. 7, with H-E-B, Market Basket and Costco leading the rankings.
Rumors — or wishful thinking — in online community boards have long pointed to a Trader Joe’s opening in the former Randalls building at Kingwood Commons.
Dhanani acquired the 165,000-square-foot shopping center in March 2023. At the time, the vacancy rate was 55%, with the vacant Randalls building accounting for most of that.
A 22,300-square-foot Planet Fitness is also scheduled to open at the end of the month at 600 Kingwood Drive. Previously, Dhanani had told the Houston Business Journal it also was in talks with a kids entertainment concept for part of the space.
Some of the shopping center’s current tenants include Pei Wei, Carrabba’s, Pizza Hut, Petco, Massage Envy, Talbots and Jos. A. Bank.
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