Drive Highway 249 past the Grand Parkway on any given week this year and you will ask yourself the same question every other Tomball resident is asking: is that thing finished yet? The honest answer is that some of it opened last spring, some of it just wrapped construction, and a third chunk will not welcome its first customer until sometime in 2027. Announcements about The Grand at 249 have been landing all year, and it is easy to lose track of which ones mean "open for dinner tonight" and which ones mean "steel is up, come back later."
Three-quarters of a mile away, Old Town Tomball has spent the same stretch of 2026 running its own calendar that has nothing to do with any of it. That gap between a headline-grabbing highway corridor and a century-old downtown that never paused for construction updates is the more interesting story here.
What's Actually Open Right Now
The tenants who have been serving food and ringing up sales at The Grand at 249 for a while include Portillo's, Bojangles, Smalls Sliders, Gringo's Mexican Kitchen, Black Bear Diner, Jersey Mike's, Starbucks, and AT&T. Black Bear Diner opened at the Grand Parkway and Highway 249 intersection back in late October, and its all-day breakfast menu has had close to a year to become a habit for people who live nearby.
The newest addition to that open list is Cindy Smith's second Chick-fil-A location, at 25527 Tomball Pkwy, which started serving customers on June 25, 2026. Smith also runs the older Chick-fil-A at 249 and Jones Road, and that original location closed on June 12, 2026, for a full rebuild that is not expected to reopen until December. Bruster's Ice Cream and a freshly finished Olive Garden also opened this year, the Olive Garden's $3.5 million build having been targeted for completion by mid-August. So if you have noticed one Chick-fil-A dark while a new one nearby is packed, that is not a mixup. That is one restaurant temporarily shutting down while its replacement across the corridor covers the gap.
What's Landing In 2026, And What's Actually 2027
This is where the timeline gets useful, because the announcements for The Grand at 249 have not arrived in the order most people assume. Here is how the rest of the build breaks down by realistic window rather than press-release date.
| Timing | What's landing |
|---|---|
| Already open | Portillo's, Bojangles, Smalls Sliders, Gringo's Mexican Kitchen, Black Bear Diner, Jersey Mike's, Starbucks, AT&T, Chick-fil-A (Grand Pkwy location, opened June 25), Bruster's, and Olive Garden (construction wrapped by mid-August) |
| Still to come before year's end | The Great Greek Mediterranean Grill (build finishing by November), Sam's Club (developer NewQuest said in late July it's still set to open "later this year") |
| Pushed into 2027 | Carrabba's Italian Grill (completion anticipated around March 2027), Wendy's (just starting construction on its freeway-fronting pad), and the entire junior-anchor block: Dick's Sporting Goods, Ross Dress for Less, Burlington, Petco, Sephora, Bath & Body Works, Cavender's, Dollar Tree, and Milano Nails |
That last column is worth sitting with. Dick's Sporting Goods and Ross alone leased more than 82,000 square feet combined at the development, and neither one opens until the second quarter of 2027 at the earliest. The Sam's Club is a good example of how these timelines slip even for developers who file public permits months in advance. Its original permit filing pointed to a late June 2026 opening. By late July, with the building's exterior visibly complete, NewQuest was still only saying "later this year." A few weeks of slippage on a 166,664-square-foot warehouse club is normal construction reality, but it means anyone who planned a shopping trip around the original date has been waiting longer than the paperwork suggested.
NewQuest's own president, Austin Alvis, put the honest version of the timeline on record in late July: the full 450,000-square-foot project, split across the northwest and southwest corners of the interchange, is not expected to be complete until the end of 2027. That is still more than a year out from where things stand today.
"It's still a super regional suburban intersection that's focused on convenience, retail, restaurants and other services," Alvis said.
Which is a fair description of what The Grand at 249 will eventually be. It is just not what it is yet.
Three-Quarters Of A Mile Away, Nothing's Waiting On Any Of This
Old Town Tomball's fall and winter calendar does not care whether Dick's Sporting Goods opens on schedule. The Depot Plaza at 201 S. Elm St. has been running its own recurring lineup for years, and the next few months are already dated:
- GroovFest, September 26, a retro-themed street festival at the Tomball Depot Museum with a VW show hosted by the North Houston Volkswagen Club
- Spooktacular, October 10, with bounce houses, face painting, and a movie at dusk
- Depot Day Fall Fest, November 7, featuring a large-scale model train display and fall treats
- Tomball Holiday Parade, November 21
- Deck the Depot Tree Lighting, December 5
- The Tomball German Christmas Market, December 11 through 13, marking its 18th year with free admission, free parking, and a shuttle running from the HCA Houston Healthcare Tomball east lot
Underneath all of it sits the Tomball Farmers Market, open every Saturday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. year-round at 205 W. Main St., certified by the Texas Department of Agriculture as an all-local market. That market has been the anchor of a Saturday morning routine in Old Town long before anyone broke ground at the Grand Parkway.
The depot itself has a history that explains why residents treat this corner of downtown as more than a backdrop. Built in 1907, it stopped serving passengers in 1969 and sat unused for over two decades until a Save the Depot Committee formed to keep it from being demolished. In 1993, with help from a local house-moving business, the depot was physically relocated to Burroughs Park, a 320-acre county park outside the city. It was moved back and rededicated on January 27, 2007, timed to Tomball's centennial. People did not let that building disappear twice, which is a different kind of civic investment than a shopping center lease.
The City Isn't Choosing Between Them
Tomball's newly adopted comprehensive plan, released in late 2025, treats the two corridors as separate tracks on purpose rather than picking a winner. The plan calls for public art and placemaking investment in Old Town through a partnership called the Heart of Tomball Alliance, and it names a specific redevelopment target: Legacy Square, the reimagined former First Baptist Church campus on Main Street, now planned as a mixed-use site. Between 2014 and 2024, the city's sales tax revenue grew 66.6 percent according to Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts data, a decade that covers both the early buildout of the Grand Parkway corridor and downtown's slower, steadier small-business growth.
The city's own planning coverage put the downtown half of that balance in one line, quoting a city official simply as Quinn: "Downtown is our heartbeat."
That is not marketing language competing with a retail center. It is a city government explicitly funding both directions at once, on two different clocks, because the growth on one side does not replace what already works on the other.
For residents, the practical takeaway is simple. If your fall plans hinge on a specific store or restaurant at The Grand at 249, check whether it is on the 2026 side of that table or the 2027 side before you build a Saturday around it. If you just want somewhere to be this weekend, Old Town Tomball already has your calendar filled through the German Christmas Market in December, and it has had that calendar for years.
Whichever side of town you find yourself in more often, it is worth having someone in your corner who tracks both. If you are weighing what any of this means for your own Tomball property, or just want a straight read on where the city's growth is actually heading next, Jordan Weingrad is a good person to ask.
