If you live in the 78704 area code, chances are that you’ve set foot in the H-E-B grocery store located at the southwest corner of South Congress Ave. and Oltorf St. at least once—if not on a regular basis. Since opening in 1957 as what was then Austin’s largest supermarket, the venerable San Antonio-based chain’s store at 2400 South Congress Ave. has so far outlasted the rapid pace of re-development going on in its surrounding neighborhoods.
But that will soon change, as H-E-B recently announced that the 62-year-old store will soon be demolished, and a new multi-story replacement will be erected on the same site. The new store will expand the footprint of the current store, which the company admits is too small for the volume of customers, by adding some 40,000 square feet of store space, 300 more parking spaces, and additional floors.
Plans and permitting for the store are still underway, but initial renderings showed the inclusion of a food hall, H-E-B’s first-ever beer garden, an outdoor seating area with live music performance space, and company office space. The store will also display murals and artwork by local artists and provide wide, pedestrian-friendly sidewalks to encourage people to walk and bike to the store. The designs also call for a 25-foot grass installation on the westside of the property to help buffer neighboring homes from noise.
The announcement that H-E-B would replace the current store in the same location came as a surprise to many observers. This is because in 2016, the company bought the Twin Oaks Shopping Center, which is located diagonally from the current store on the northeast corner of the South Congress/Oltorf intersection. The assumption at the time, which H-E-B never confirmed, was that the new store would be built as part of the redevelopment of the Twin Oaks center, which was built in 1955.
However, after discussions with city traffic planners, H-E-B determined that the current lot would be better suited to accommodate the increased traffic volume going in and out of the store. Still, in the short term, H-E-B will use the Twin Oaks site to open a 24,000-square-foot store to temporarily fill the void after the current store is demolished and while the new store is under construction.
The company hopes that the permitting process for the new project will be completed sometime in 2020, after which the old store would be torn down, in conjunction with the opening of the temporary store at Twin Oaks. The new store would then be ready to open in 2022, while future plans for the Twin Oaks Shopping Center remain unclear.