One of Houston’s busiest retail hubs is bracing for another overhaul as MetroNational tees up the redevelopment of Memorial City Mall, adding to the sweeping changes already reshaping the west Houston corridor.
Early filings with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation indicate that the owner plans to level about 216,000 square feet of interior space, relocate a mall entrance and carve out a new ground-floor lobby with tenant areas. The Houston Chronicle reported that another 190,000 square feet outside the mall would come down to make room for a reworked parking layout and other site updates.
The project is expected to cost $8.8 million. Gensler is listed as the architect.
MetroNational confirmed the demolition will include portions of the old Sears wing but didn’t specify which segments are on the chopping block. Sears was the mall’s original anchor when it opened in 1966 and MetroNational razed the main store building in 2020 after the chain shuttered the location two years earlier. Construction documents label the latest project “400 Gessner–North Site Phase 2,” hinting that the work could land near the Cinemark theater. Temporary tenants, including kiosks and pop-ups, will be moved before the walls come down.
Work is scheduled to start in May 2026. The parking-related improvements are expected to wrap by January 2027, with the broader redevelopment finishing that April. The landlord said it will release final details as plans take shape.
The mall revamp is separate from MetroNational’s splashier 27-acre “town square” proposal unveiled in 2022, which the company said remains under evaluation. Still, the amount of capital flowing into the area shows how aggressively MetroNational is repositioning its portfolio around Memorial City.
Across I-10, the firm teamed up with Radom Capital on Greenside, a 35,000-square-foot mixed-use project set to bring retail, restaurants, offices and wellness concepts online in 2026. And earlier this year, MetroNational snapped up the 309,000-square-foot retail component of CityCentre, one of the city’s most trafficked open-air shopping districts, soon after acquiring the former Marathon Oil tower next door.
Taken together, the project point to another wave of reinvestment in a submarket where retail density keeps climbing.
— Eric Weilbacher
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