If you’ve never thought about (or maybe even heard of) Mont Belvieu, that’s about to change. Between the booming downstream market, $7.5B of petrochemical expansion and the Port, the city 30 miles east of Houston is coming into its own. Fidelis and HEB are JV’ing on a 41-acre development at I-10 and Eagle Drive that’ll transform the community. We sat down with Shaw Commercial Properties’ Greg Shaw, who repped the city in bringing the retail bigwigs to Mont Belvieu. It took over a year and involved a 380 agreement between the city and HEB.

Fidelis is building a 285k SF center, including an 84k SF HEB. It’ll be a game changer, Greg tells us: There’s almost no retail in Mont Belvieu, and certainly nothing like the big-box development Fidelis will build. Greg’s marketing another 30 acres adjacent to HEB for more retail development. He’s negotiating with a Mexican restaurant, two hotels and a bank so far and tells us there’s lots of good traction from end users. The sites are fully entitled with the city handling utilities and retention and could offer retailers incentives. Mont Belvieu mayor Nick Dixon (pictured below: he, city planner Bryan Easum and city attorney Grady Randle were instrumental in getting the deal done) had expected the combined 76 acres of retail to be developed over the next five or 10 years, and he’s excited to see it happening sooner.

There’s been a flurry of other development nearby, mostly public—Mont Belvieu just upgraded infrastructure, built new schools and update/built parks, including a new 75-acre regional park and sports complex. The Grand Parkway is coming through just west of the parcel, which is spurring a lot of activity. Greg says people think of Mont Belvieu as far away, but it’s the same distance from Downtown as Katy or The Woodlands. The city’s population has grown 75% in the last 10 years. Combined with proximity to the Port and the presence of giants like Chevron and Enterprise refineries (i.e. lots of jobs) investors/developers who have stepped back in other parts of town are coming back to the table in Mont Belvieu.