Construction Begins on First Fast-Food Restaurants for Grand Morton Town Center
March 13, 2017
KATY (Covering Katy) – Construction will soon be underway on the initial wave of fast-food restaurants for freeway-fronting sites in Grand Morton Town Center in Katy. The center is anchored by a Kroger Marketplace, which opened last October.
Taco Bell will be going vertical in the coming weeks on a 29,815 square foot ground-leased pad site. McDonalds’s will soon be constructed on a 67,894 square foot pad site at the corner of Grand Parkway and Morton Ranch Road. Both restaurants will open in late summer.
Taco Bell’s general contractor is Jerry Kachel Builder Inc. of Spring, and McDonald’s is Houston-based BE&DE Construction.
Coming on line at year’s end will be Whataburger and Chick-fil-A, which have ground leased 42,574 square feet and 59,699 square feet respectively.
“There is a huge void in this area for fast-food restaurants,” said Josh Friedlander, an associate for Houston-based NewQuest Properties, the developer.
The NewQuest project, which will total 600,459 square feet at build-out, features a perimeter ringed with 16 pad sites for a select mix of dining, banking and retail. To date, Friedlander and his partner, Rebecca Le, have leased seven pad sites.
“Demand has been extremely strong for inline space and pad sites,” Friedlander said. “The spark clearly is the new home growth in this part of Katy.”
In the fourth quarter of 2016, buyers closed on 1,680 homes within a five-mile radius of Grand
Morton Town Center. The fast-growing area now has 389,644 residents in the seven-mile trade area, with an average annual household income of $108,000 and a median age of 33.
“A lot of retail opportunities were created when this section of the Grand Parkway was completed,” Friedlander said. “The industry quickly identified this spot as the main regional intersection off 99 between I-10 and 290.”
With fast-food sites under construction, Friedlander and Le are now courting full-service, sit-down and fast-casual concepts for the project.
“A well-rounded mix of dining options, retail and community services will build in sustainability and draw customers coming and going from their homes,” said Friedlander.
Grand Morton Town Center has direct access to Grand Parkway plus nearly three-quarters of a mile frontage along Morton Ranch Road.
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