Lowe’s Plans $14M Store in Booming Austin Suburb

A number of deals are happening in Austin’s red-hot retail market.

Furniture company Ethan Allen will build a showroom and store in Cedar Park, a fast-growing suburb northeast of Austin. The property, at 5204 183A Frontage Road, will span 12,200 square feet and cost $4 million to construct, according to a filing with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation.

Work will begin in August and wrap up by June 2025, the filing states. Houston-based Harry Gendel Architects, which previously worked on Ethan Allen’s Shenandoah, Texas, location, is attached to the project.

Elsewhere in the northern Austin suburbs, home improvement retailer Lowe’s is planning a $14 million store in Georgetown. That city, which has grown at one of the fastest rates of any city of its size in the country, recently scored another H-E-B grocery store.

The Lowe’s will reach 110,200 square feet, costing about $127 per square foot to build. Work is estimated to start in May and finish by the end of the year, according to a TDLR filing.

The new store, planned for 2301 North IH 35, was designed by Blue Ridge Architecture.

Austin’s 52.4 million square feet of retail space is nearly 97 percent occupied, according to a report from Weitzman Group, a retail real estate firm. Another 789,000 square feet of retail space is under construction in the state capital. While deliveries in 2023 marked the most new construction in seven years, most of that space was taken by large anchors like H-E-B and Costco.

“The lack of newly constructed space means that existing space is at a premium for retailers looking to take advantage of locations in an extremely healthy market,” the report reads.

Rents in suburban markets like Cedar Park and Georgetown held stable, with Class A small tenants ranging from the high $30s per square foot up to the $60s for new space.