Drive the corner of Highway 105 and FM 2854 this month and you will find dirt movers cutting into a hillside that sat untouched for more than a decade. H-E-B has owned this 32-acre tract since around 2014 and did nothing with it until now. The grading is underway, a detention pond is staked out, and a 127,186-square-foot grocery store is taking shape on ground that once belonged to Dr. Charles B. Stewart, the Montgomery physician credited with designing the Texas flag.
Stewart signed the Texas Declaration of Independence in 1836, served as secretary to Texas's first two revolutionary governments, in effect the territory's first secretary of state, and by 1839 sat on the committee that gave Texas its Lone Star banner. He practiced medicine and ran a drugstore in Montgomery until his death in 1885, and he is buried in the town cemetery a short drive from where the new store is going up. The city has leaned on that history for decades, calling itself the Birthplace of the Texas Flag on its own history page. Now the same ground is about to hold a fuel station, a car wash, and a full-size grocery anchor.
That pairing is worth sitting with for a moment, but it is not the most useful thing this project tells a Montgomery resident. The more useful question is why this corner, and why now.
The Real Reason It's Landing Here
Montgomery is a small city sandwiched between two larger, faster-growing neighbors. Conroe has more rooftops. Magnolia sits closer to the Grand Parkway. If retail chases population, both should have beaten Montgomery to a project like this. Neither has.
Mayor Sara Countryman has been direct about why H-E-B and Academy Sports + Outdoors picked Montgomery instead: the city is not under a water moratorium, and Conroe and Magnolia both are. Utility capacity, not foot traffic, is deciding where the next decade of Montgomery County retail lands. A developer can want to build in Conroe all day long. Without a water hookup, the project does not move. Montgomery can say yes.
Countryman has described the growth in blunt terms: it is a train the city cannot stop, so the choice is to shape it rather than resist it. That framing shows up in a small but telling detail about the H-E-B site itself. The required detention pond, normally just a drainage feature, is being designed with what Countryman called a special Texan feel rather than a bare retention basin. The city asked for that. It is a small signal that Montgomery intends to keep its identity even as the intersection around it stops looking like a two-lane crossroads.
What's Actually Confirmed
Strip away the speculation and here is what has been verified through city and state filings:
- The store sits on the southeast corner of Highway 105 and FM 2854, with 16.75 of the 32.42 acres used for the H-E-B pad itself.
- The building is permitted at 127,186 square feet, joining newer H-E-B stores that have already opened on FM 1488 near Magnolia and in Willis.
- The estimated construction cost is $30 million, and Countryman has said the store is expected to employ around 200 people once it opens.
- The site plan includes a fuel station and car wash in addition to the grocery store, plus room for outparcel retail.
- The city projects the development will generate roughly $45,600 a year in tax revenue against about $140,000 in public infrastructure costs, figures that came out of the feasibility study the city council approved in May 2024.
Those numbers are locked in. The opening date is not.
The Date Nobody Can Agree On
If you have read three different articles about this project, you have probably read three different opening dates, and that is not a reporting error. It reflects how a single Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation filing gets interpreted differently as construction drags on.
| Source | Reported timing |
|---|---|
| Community Impact, April 2025 | Fourth quarter of 2026, per Mayor Countryman |
| Houston Chronicle, May 2025 | Late summer 2026, based on TDLR filing |
| Chron, March 2025 | Late summer 2026 completion |
| Austin American-Statesman, January 2026 | August 2026, per state filings |
| SprawlTag site visit, March 2026 | No official date, still under construction |
As of a March 2026 site visit, the project was still classified as under construction with no vertical building confirmed, H-E-B had not responded to requests to confirm a date, and the Montgomery location was still absent from the company's own store locator, which typically adds a location only as the opening nears. If you are timing anything around this store, whether that is a move, a lease renewal on your current commute, or just curiosity about when your Saturday grocery run gets shorter, treat late summer to Q4 2026 as the honest range rather than a fixed date.
Academy Is Coming Too, and It's Not Waiting on H-E-B
A separate project is moving in parallel a short distance away. Academy Sports + Outdoors has confirmed plans for a store on C.B. Stewart Drive near Ransom's Steakhouse & Saloon, on its own 32-acre site. As of spring 2025 reporting, Academy's project was still in the planning stage, with an opening targeted for late summer 2026, the same rough window as H-E-B but a distinct permit, a distinct site, and no dependency on the grocery project's timeline.
Two large-format retailers choosing Montgomery in the same stretch of months is not a coincidence tied to one company's expansion strategy. It is the water capacity story again, applied twice.
What This Actually Changes
Right now, a Montgomery resident who wants an H-E-B drives to Magnolia, Willis, or Conroe, whichever is closer to that day's errands. Kroger and Brookshire Brothers cover the town itself, and Walmart sits nearby, but the full H-E-B format, with its scale of prepared foods, produce, and store brands, has never had a location inside city limits.
That changes the geometry of a lot of ordinary weeks. It also changes what the Highway 105 corridor looks like from the road. A hilly, undeveloped tract that has sat vacant for more than a decade is about to carry a grocery anchor, a fuel station, a car wash, and whatever outparcel tenants follow. Combined with the Academy site on C.B. Stewart Drive, this stretch of town is picking up two large-format anchors at roughly the same time.
None of this erases what makes Montgomery Montgomery. The flag history stays true regardless of what gets built on top of it. The town cemetery where Stewart is buried, Fernland Historical Park, the antique storefronts downtown, all of that persists whether or not there's an H-E-B fuel station a mile away. What's shifting is the daily errand map, not the town's identity, and that is a distinction worth holding onto as the corner fills in over the next year.
If you are watching this corridor because you are thinking about what a growing Montgomery means for your own next move, whether that's buying, selling, or just understanding what your property is worth as the town changes around it, Jenny Hill has spent nearly two decades reading exactly these kinds of shifts across Montgomery County. Schedule a consultation when you're ready to talk through what it means for you.
