Ask anyone in Cypress what's new this year and the answer arrives before you finish the question: the second Costco. Never mind that the state filing for it never named an exact address, or that the projected finish date is still a little under three months out. A $64.5 million warehouse near Grand Parkway has managed to dominate the conversation more than six restaurants that have already opened their doors since January.
That gap between what people are talking about and what people can actually walk into is the real story of Cypress in 2026. The loudest project on everyone's radar is the one you still can't visit. The places you can eat at tonight already had their moment online months ago, and the conversation moved on before most residents noticed the doors were open.
The Places Already Open This Year
Here is what's actually running right now, in the order it opened:
- Connie's Frozen Custard, 11231 Greenhouse Road, held its grand opening January 14.
- Einstein Bros. Bagels opened at the southeast corner of Tuckerton and Fry in early March.
- Layne's Chicken Fingers, 9850 Fry Road, held its grand opening July 18. The first 50 guests got free Layne's for a year.
- Tim Hortons, 11430 Barker Cypress Road, had a "Now Open" sign visible on the building by August 11, more than two weeks ahead of its own announced August 28 opening date.
- Texas Roadhouse, 22020 West Road near Grand Parkway, opened June 1 after hiring more than 250 people. It's the first full-service Texas Roadhouse located directly in Cypress, and plans for it were first reported back in 2024.
- Walk-On's Sports Bistreaux, 9955 Barker Cypress Road at the Boardwalk at Towne Lake, held its grand opening June 8 after taking over the waterfront space Sam's Boat vacated the year before.
Spread that list across a map and a pattern shows up. Four corridors are absorbing almost all of it: the Boardwalk at Towne Lake along Barker Cypress Road, the West Road stretch near Grand Parkway, the Fry Road strip further south, and Greenhouse Road to the east. If you've been driving past any of those four areas and feeling like something changes every few months, that instinct is accurate. It's not a feeling. It's six confirmed openings inside a single year.
Brett Gunn, the franchisee behind the new Walk-On's, put it simply when the restaurant opened:
"We can't wait to welcome everyone in and show Cypress what Walk-On's is all about."
That's the kind of statement that gets made at every ribbon cutting. What makes it worth repeating here is the timeline behind it, because that timeline is where the real information is.
Why the Timeline Never Matches the Buzz
Every one of these openings followed roughly the same script. A permit or a state filing lands first, usually with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation. A local outlet picks it up. Then residents wait, sometimes for the better part of a year, before there's actually a door to walk through.
Trader Joe's is the clearest example. The project was registered as a "Specialty Grocer" with the state in November 2024. The store didn't open until December 18, 2025, more than a year later. Walk-On's followed a similar arc. Sam's Boat closed abruptly in July 2025, and the Towne Lake space sat through a renovation before Walk-On's opened its doors in June 2026, roughly eleven months after the old restaurant went dark. Texas Roadhouse took the longest of all. Plans for a Cypress location first surfaced in 2024, and the restaurant didn't seat its first table until June 1, 2026.
| Business | First public signal | Opened | Time between |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trader Joe's, Towne Lake | Filed as "Specialty Grocer," November 2024 | December 18, 2025 | about 13 months |
| Walk-On's Sports Bistreaux | Sam's Boat closed, July 2025 | June 8, 2026 | about 11 months |
| Texas Roadhouse | Plans surfaced, 2024 | June 1, 2026 | roughly 2 years |
None of that is unusual for suburban retail construction. What it means for a Cypress resident is more useful than the mechanics: the businesses generating headlines right now are, almost by definition, the ones you'll actually be able to visit next year, not this month. If you want to know what's open today, the answer is sitting quietly in a list nobody's talking about anymore, because the news cycle already spent its attention on these places back when they were still just filings.
The same rhythm is playing out again a few doors down. Land of a Thousand Hills Coffee & Bakery closed at the Boardwalk on November 30, 2025, after nearly ten years in that spot. A state filing dated October 27, 2025, weeks before that closure, already named its replacement, La La Land Cafe, with a target move-in of February 2026. The paperwork for what comes next is often on file before the previous tenant has even turned off the lights.
What's Still Just Paperwork
Which brings us back to Costco. As of today, the second Cypress store is exactly one year into its own timeline. The Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation filing came through on September 5, 2025, describing a $64.5 million, 160,000-square-foot warehouse with a separate $3.3 million fuel station, and setting an estimated completion date of November 2026. That leaves a little under three months before the projected finish, and the filings themselves never specified an exact address, only that the site sits somewhere in the 77433 zip code between FM 529 and Cypress Creek.
Two other names are further behind than that. Taco Palenque has filed for a roughly 4,000-square-foot building along Highway 290 near Fry Road, expected to open late this year, which would make it the chain's second north Houston location. Flower Child, the health-forward fast-casual chain, filed for a Cypress location in June 2026 with no opening date attached at all.
If any of those three are the ones you've been waiting on, the honest answer is: not yet, and possibly not for a while. Costco is the closest, sitting on a public timeline that points to the tail end of the year. The other two haven't reached the stage where a date means anything.
The Practical Version of All This
If you're deciding where to eat this week, the answer isn't the project everyone's been discussing since last fall. It's the six places that already opened while that conversation was happening, spread across Barker Cypress Road, West Road, Fry Road, and Greenhouse Road. If you're specifically counting down to the second Costco, the honest math says you're a little under three months from a projected finish date that could still move, the way Walk-On's own construction timeline slipped past its original spring target before opening in June.
Cypress isn't short on new places. It's just that the ones worth the drive tonight and the ones worth watching for next year rarely overlap.
Corcoran Prestige works this side of Houston every day, and we notice the same pattern our neighbors do: the corridor changes fast, and it's worth knowing which parts of it are ready now. If you ever want to talk about what any of this growth means for a specific street or a specific plan, reach out. Contact us.
