What's Changing Around Memorial City And CityCentre This Summer

For years, the honest description of the Memorial City corridor was "drive between two boxes." You went to the mall, or you went to CityCentre, and the half-mile of Gessner and Katy Freeway in between existed mostly as parking lots and access roads. That description is quietly expiring. Between the Greenside build-out on the north side of I-10, the first swings of a hammer at the mall in May, and CityCentre's change of ownership last fall, the block is mid-pivot from enclosed-mall logic to walkable-district logic.

If you live in Memorial, the practical version of that story is this: for the next twelve months, the neighborhood you drive through every day is going to look like a job site in three places at once. Here is what is actually opening, what is actually closing, and where to go in the meantime.

The one-acre pivot at 1085 Gessner

Greenside is the project doing the heaviest lifting on the "walkable-district" argument. Developed by MetroNational in partnership with Radom Capital and designed by Michael Hsu Office of Architecture, Greenside is transforming three warehouses at 1085 Gessner Road into about 35,000 square feet of retail, wellness and office space. It broke ground next to Kirby Ice House, Mia's Table, and Torchy's Tacos, which means the finished project stitches an existing food-and-drink cluster into a single open-air block instead of three separate destinations you drive between.

The tenant list has landed in two waves. The first, announced in February, leaned wellness. The second, announced in June, filled in the coffee-and-dessert gaps. Here is what is confirmed as of mid-2026:

• Honest Mary's — Austin-born fast-casual bowls; the Greenside location will be the second in Houston, joining an outpost in the River Oaks Shopping Center that opened last year.
• Leemoo — a premium health bar serving smoothies, açaí bowls, and fresh-pressed juices, with an existing location in Montrose Collective.
• Hiatus — a day spa building on another Houston location in the Tanglewood area.
• Solidcore — the reformer-based fitness studio, with locations already in the Heights and Montrose.
• Pizzana, plus the June additions: Merit Coffee, Tifa Chocolate & Gelato, Epic Cycles, Swish Dental, and Original ChopShop.

Two of those names deserve a footnote for locals. Epic Cycles is relocating from its current CityCentre location to Greenside, so if you've been servicing a bike at the south-of-I-10 shop, that trip is about to move north. And Merit Coffee, founded in San Antonio in 2009, has thirteen locations across San Antonio, Austin, and Dallas, which makes the Greenside store the brand's Houston debut worth watching.

First tenant openings are anticipated Q4 2026. That is later than the "summer 2026" timeline floated when the project was announced, so plan on a fall or holiday-season debut rather than a Labor Day one.

What actually happens at the mall this summer

The Memorial City Mall redevelopment is the piece most residents will feel first, because it involves actual demolition on a building most of us drive past weekly. MetroNational filed plans with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation to demolish approximately 216,000 square feet of interior space and roughly 190,000 square feet of exterior space, with the $8.8 million first phase scheduled to break ground in May 2026 and the broader redevelopment finishing in April 2027. The work centers on the former Sears wing and adjacent corridors, with a new ground-floor lobby and relocated mall entrance carved out for incoming tenants.

The dates worth putting in your calendar:

The parking piece is the milestone most current shoppers will notice first; the parking deck restripes, new wayfinding signage, and rerouted vehicle entries should reduce the choke points around the south side of the mall. If your household routine includes the school-year run to Target across the street or a standing appointment near JCPenney, expect the parking pattern to look strange until early next year.

For everything not in the demolition zone, life continues. During construction, the rest of Memorial City Mall stays open. Macy's, Dillard's, JCPenney, Target across the street, and the dining and entertainment options, including the AMC theater and the food court on the east side, continue normal hours.

The bigger context on why this is happening now: the $8.8 million phase is the operational first move, but MetroNational has been signaling much bigger intentions for the surrounding 265-acre Memorial City district. In 2022 the company unveiled a 27-acre town square proposal that would add apartments, boutiques, restaurants, offices, and an open-air central plaza with green space tying the mall to the existing medical and office towers. The demolition filing is the first physical step toward that plan being more than a rendering.

CityCentre now answers to Memorial City

The change most residents haven't clocked yet happened last October, quietly, in a press release. Houston-based real estate developer MetroNational acquired the retail portions of CityCentre from Midway, which is also a Houston-based real estate developer. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

What that means on the ground: the same company that owns Memorial City Mall now controls the retail side of the destination across I-10. The deal covered a lot. The over 300,000-square-foot property is home to more than 20 restaurants, ranging from casual concepts such as Hopdoddy, Grimaldi's, and Bellagreen to more upscale options such as Daily Gather, the Capital Grille, North Italia, and Eddie V's Prime Seafood, as well as retailers such as Kendra Scott, Sur la Table, and Warby Parker. It also includes entertainment destinations such as movie theater Star Cinema Grill and upscale bowling concept Bowl & Barrel.

MetroNational is working with Houston's Radom Capital to reimagine and elevate the retail experience at CityCentre. If Radom's name sounds familiar, it should. The firm is known for developing MKT Heights, the Montrose Collective, and the historic Tower Theater complex and adjacent buildings on lower Westheimer, which is a fair preview of the aesthetic and tenant mix likely to migrate west. The Moran hotel, the office buildings, and the apartments at CityCentre stay with Midway, so leasing conversations for storefronts and pad sites now run through Memorial City.

The Lawn is doing the heavy lifting until Greenside opens

The one thing every Memorial resident should already know about but often forgets: the Memorial City Lawn is programmed all summer, and the calendar is more interesting than the mall directory suggests. Per the venue's own events schedule, the summer 2026 lineup includes a stretch of programming on The Lawn running from June 11 through July 19, and a separate run at the mall itself from July 8 to July 17. Hotel ZaZa Memorial City is also anchoring events on the calendar through the end of the year.

The practical read: while Greenside's fall opening slips into Q4 and the mall's south-side entries turn into a construction detour, The Lawn is the summer answer for a Friday-evening walk with kids or an out-of-town guest who wants a Houston-outdoor moment without a drive downtown.

Why the sequencing matters for the block

Any one of these projects, in isolation, is a real estate press release. Together they read as a deliberate re-plotting of the Memorial City corridor from a two-mall commute into a walkable neighborhood spine. Greenside stitches the north-of-I-10 restaurant cluster into a single block. The mall demolition opens a new lobby and, eventually, a town-square-scale reconfiguration. CityCentre under Memorial City ownership means the two anchors on either side of the freeway are finally being programmed by the same leasing team, with the same design partner they used at Greenside.

For residents, the "so what" is smaller and more immediate. Your summer routine has three moving pieces. Kirby Ice House, Mia's Table, and Torchy's are the same, but the block around them is a construction site with landscaping installed. The mall works, but the parking approach from the south is going to feel wrong until January. CityCentre still has its full roster, and the new ownership hasn't yet changed a single storefront, which is a window to enjoy the current tenant mix before the inevitable reshuffle.

If you own a home nearby, the more useful frame is that the walk-score of your block is being upgraded in installments over the next eighteen months. That is a texture change worth noticing before it shows up in comparable-sales chatter.

When you are ready to talk about what any of this means for your Memorial address, or for a move into the district while the block is repricing itself, Nicole Brende and the HTX Collective are the neighborhood desk to call. Reach out for a consultation or a custom market analysis, and we will map the changes against your street.