The Shops at Royal Brook could bring retail, multifamily living to Kingwood

The Shops at Royal Brook, an incoming shopping center, will break ground in early 2021 at the northwest corner of West Lake Houston Parkway and Mills Branch Drive in Kingwood. The almost 50-acre property is a commercial development from Preethi LLC.

Representatives from the property's real estate broker, Creighton Realty Partners, and the company engineering the development updated board members on the shopping center at the Dec. 10 Lake Houston Area Redevelopment Authority board of directors meeting. In the future, the LHRA board will consider approving a developer agreement to accept the property into the boundaries of its Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone 10.

Upon completion, the development could feature retail, restaurants, office space, a day care, an assisted-living facility and an apartment complex, according to a conceptual land design. A timeline was not provided as to when the entire development could be completed; however, Juan Sanchez, a marketing broker with Creighton Realty Partners, said they hope to add tenants to the center next year.

"Obviously, that back portion of Kingwood is very underserved for many of these uses," Sanchez said. "So we hope that once retail picks back up again sometime next year, that we can start to slowly backfill some of this."

James Shanks, vice president of Halff Associates, the civil engineering company for the project, said at the Dec. 10 meeting that national gas station chain 7-Eleven is the first tenant confirmed for the development, with construction on the station set to begin in early 2021.

Sanchez said he hopes to secure a CVS Pharmacy for the center. The national pharmacy chain was previously in contract to join the development, but the contract was terminated at the start of the pandemic, Sanchez said.

"We feel that they would be a good fit to kind of kick-start this development," he said.

The Shops at Royal Brook will also include a new traffic signal at the intersection of West Lake Houston Parkway and Mills Branch Drive as well as numerous detention ponds.

"Interestingly enough, all of this property is above the 500-year flood plain on the current [Federal Emergency Management Agency] maps, so that's very helpful," Shanks said. "Nonetheless, we do have to provide detention for these outfalls."