May 4, 2022 – H-E-B has officially broken ground on their brand new store in Georgetown!
“This is a great day for Georgetown, Texas,” Mayor Josh Schroeder said. “This has been a long time in the making…we applaud H-E-B for persevering through that process, that time, and the reason H-E-B does that is because they’re not a business, they’re a community partner. They don’t look at it next week or next year, or even next decade, they look in terms of decades long relationships with the City, and we know that they’re going to build something here that’s going to be something that we as a community can be proud of for the rest of our lives, and it will outlive all of us here, and that’s a wonderful, wonderful thing, and so we thank H-E-B for their community partnership.”
The grocery store has been a integral part of the Georgetown community for over 50 years with the first store arriving in the city in the mid-1960’s. Laura Estes, Director of Marketing and Merchandising of Central Texas H-E-B, spoke about the decades long relationship between H-E-B and the community.
“It’s been a long serving love affair, 56 years,” Laura Estes, Director of Marketing and Merchandising of Central Texas H-E-B, said. “When you go and look back, 1966 on the downtown side of the San Gabriel, we put our first store…in 2001, Georgetown was continuing to grow so we opened up Georgetown #2 at Williams drive…so lots and lots of history here…thank you guys for 56 years of love to H-E-B, and we just wanted to let you know that H-E-B loves you right back and hope you guys are going to love this new store.”
This new store, located on University Avenue next to Raising Cane’s, will replace the current location off IH-35 and is scheduled to open Spring 2023.
“It is a 121,000 square foot store and it will build on H-E-B’s core strengths of everyday low prices and fresh foods by providing local produce and artisan foods within the atmosphere of a neighborhood grocery store,” Cathy Harm, H-E-B’s regional vice president in Central Texas, said. ” We’re also proud to say that we will bring in new jobs to this community and employ an additional 300 local residents within this new store.”
Harm said the new location will feature a produce department, a sushi bar, a healthy living department, an in-store scratch bakery, deli, seafood and meat market, beer and wine department, a pharmacy with in-store and two lane drive thru options, Texas Backyard’s gardening department, their Meal Simple pre-made meals section, Blooms Market, a large curbside service area with protected and dedicated parking, a fuel station and car wash, as well as a brand new True Texas BBQ restaurant with drive thru and outdoor seating serving in-house smoked all natural meats, salads and sandwiches and True Texas brews on tap!
“We are honored that we can bring this beautiful store to you, but we’re only able to do it because of the great investment that each and every one of you make with H-E-B,” Harm said. “Thank you so much for being with us here today. Thank you so much for your gracious support through our history together, we look forward to the additional partnership together for our future as we look to open up this new store.”
During the groundbreaking, H-E-B also gave $5,000 each to four local nonprofits including:
- Georgetown ISD Education Foundation
- R.O.C.K. (Ride On Center for Kids)
- The Caring Place
- The Purple Heart Integration Project
“Since we started in 2015, H-E-B has been a huge supporter of us, and so it’s amazing to see what they’ve done not only through us, but through the other nonprofits…and we’re just excited to see how this goes into the schools,” Greg Bowden, Chair of the Georgetown ISD Education Foundation told Hello Georgetown. “We’re just honored to be able to partner with a team like H-E-B and be able to keep serving the teachers and students.”
“I was just so excited to see all of the people who were up here receiving checks,” Karah Powell, Development Director at R.O.C.K. (Ride On Center for Kids), told Hello Georgetown. “H-E-B has been a great partner of R.O.C.K. for the last couple of decades and we’re just so thrilled that they’ve honored R.O.C.K.”
You can read additional information from H-E-B about the new location here.
We will keep following this story and update this page with more details as we learn them, stay tuned!
March 15, 2021 – HEB is looking at building a new location in Georgetown, in Wolf Lakes Village, and consequently replacing a current location in the city.
“We have signed a contract with HEB to sell them 15 acres,” Iva Wolf McLachlan, President of Wolf Lakes LP, told the council on Tuesday, March 9 during a City Council Workshop. “We believe HEB will be the catalyst that we need to launch Wolf Lakes Village. We believe HEB will enable us to recruit tens of thousands of square feet of smaller, high quality commercial uses and create a one of a kind destination that we envisioned originally in this [planned unit development].”
McLachlan told the council a grocery store always planned as part of the Wolf Lakes Village development and HEB is a great fit with the mission and original vision for the site.
“We are absolutely resolute in our commitment to implement our original vision with HEB and with all the other projects on our site,” McLachlan said. “We have very high standards that exists in our PUD and in our own 87 page set of architectural and design guidelines…we’re holding HEB to high standards and to their credit, HEB is onboard to meet those standards and make this store one of the best, most beautiful HEB’s in the state of Texas.”
The new location will replace the current store that sits at University Blvd and I-35.
“What we’ve delivered to the City of Georgetown with our current store at University and I-35 is substandard, not representative of the current HEB brand and in dire need of replacement,” Jared O’Brien, Director of Real Estate for HEB, told the Council during the workshop. “What’s really driving the conversation today is we are in need of replacement of significant refrigeration systems within the existing store and it will be a significant cost. So, we’re being forced to invest in some form or fashion in the existing store. We’ve long known that this store needed replacement or retrofit in some form or fashion, so it provides us with an opportunity to take the investment that we would have otherwise have put into an existing refrigeration system and move that to a new store entirely.”
O’Brien said the proposed store is slated to be 117,000 square feet. Comparatively, the current store it would be replacing is roughly 60,000 square feet, and the sister store located on Williams is 80,000 square feet.
“A great store that, again, represents the latest HEB has to offer internally and externally,” O’Brien said.
The new store would include a BBQ restaurant and drive-thru, curbside pick up, and pharmacy drive thru.
No official action was taken at the City Council Workshop and Meeting held on Tuesday, March 9, but Councilman Kevin Pitts said during a Facebook Live update certain changes needed to be reviewed to allow HEB to come into the space.
“There was something called a PUD plan,” Councilman Pitts said. “To allow for HEB to come in there, the way that the PUD, or planned unit development, was originally set up did not really fit exactly with what HEB was wanting to do.”
The workshop discussion gave city staff a chance to see how much support there was for amending the PUD, and since there is majority support for the effort, the proposal’s next step is to go to Planning and Zoning.
“The Planning and Zoning Commission will hear, there will be opportunities for public input at that meeting,” Councilman Pitts said. “Then after that, it will come to council, assuming that it’s approved there. In council, we’ll have two readings on that item…so there’ll be at least two, if not three opportunities for additional public input on the request to change the PUD.”
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