Dreaming of a Downtown Austin H-E-B

A rendering of the mixed-use H-E-B that opened in Houston in 2018. Image: Ziegler Cooper Architects

Let’s say there’s a completely unsubstantiated rumor floating around that the H-E-B grocery company is working on building a store somewhere in downtown Austin. (There is.) That’s a great way to create some intrigue, since a project like this would absolutely change the game for downtown dwellers — yeah, we love Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s, but in the end these stores serve niche interests and don’t provide all the resources at the same price points as a full-fledged grocer.

Though the density of a downtown area adds some logistical hurdles to keeping a store like this adequately stocked, if Whole Foods can do it we think there’s a distinct possibility a company with H-E-B’s reputation could pull it off — and there’s good evidence that H-E-B is pursuing more urban grocery configurations designed for dense environments already. A 96,000-square-foot “urban prototype” store anchoring a mixed-use development in Houston opened back in 2018, and the brand’s Lake Flato-designed South Flores Market concept just south of downtown San Antonio squeezes a functional grocery store into a tiny 12,000 square feet — its smallest store ever. 

H-E-B is no stranger to testing urban concepts in the Austin area, for that matter — its new stores planned on Lake Austin Boulevard and South Congress Avenue both feature multi-level layouts and other features friendly to dense environments. But moving into downtown Austin would be a big step just the same, and since that rumor we heard is absolutely just a rumor at this point, we thought we’d engage in a little idle speculation with our readers about where exactly a downtown store could go.

The odd wrinkle to this rumor is that the grocer supposedly plans to build a store within an existing building downtown, which is a real “zigged when we thought they would zag” moment, at least for us — we thought the ground floor retail space of a project along the lines of the Railyard redevelopment would be prime real estate for something like this, but retrofitting an existing building is out of left field. 

A rendering of the multi-level H-E-B planned on Lake Austin Boulevard at the site of the former “Tree Safeway.” Image: Lake Flato

We’d love it if H-E-B’s deep pockets took on the tremendous challenge of renovating the Hobby Building — so decayed on the inside that its underrated postmodern architecture doesn’t save its reputation with very many people besides us — but otherwise we have no idea where something like this could go, and the massive difference in square footages of the two urban store concepts we mentioned earlier means we can’t really use size to narrow the possibilities down.

That’s where y’all come in. We’ve prepared a survey for your hottest takes on where a downtown H-E-B could go, and owing to the telephone game-style inaccuracy of the rumor mill, we’ve also included space for the possibility that this hypothetical store is bound for a new building after all. Give it your best shot and we’ll all have a good time:

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