Bellaire Boulevard Development: 4 Projects Taking Shape

Drive Bellaire Boulevard this month and you'll pass four different active development sites inside about a mile and a half. Orange fencing near Diho Square at 9229 Bellaire Blvd. A shell building going up at 5130 Bellaire Blvd. A rezoning notice near the H-E-B. A permit filing for a Chipotle that hasn't broken ground yet. If you live here, you've probably already started asking neighbors what's actually going up where, because none of the signage tells you much beyond a phone number and a rendering.

Here's the part that's easy to miss if you're only half paying attention on your commute: these four projects aren't one story. They're two competing bets on what this corridor should become, plus one zoning fight that tells you what the city is trying to prevent, plus one small, unglamorous project that happens to be the only one on a real calendar date. Understanding which is which tells you a lot more than any single headline about "Bellaire Boulevard's next chapter."

Two Food Halls, Two Different Track Records

The most-talked-about news on the corridor is the Bellaire Food District, a $9 million, 45,000-square-foot project planned for 9229 Bellaire Blvd, right across from Diho Square and the strip anchored by Tan Tan Restaurant. It's owned by Kevin Kan, the same developer behind the original Bellaire Food Street, which opened in 2019 a few blocks away. Permits call for construction to start in May 2026 and wrap by spring 2027.

Here's the detail worth sitting with. When Kan opened the original Bellaire Food Street in 2019, he had 13 restaurant tenants named and ready before the doors opened, everything from MeetFresh to Fat Ni BBQ to Beard Papa's. The new Food District doesn't have that yet. The permit filing itself lists tenant space as not yet assigned, and Kan has told local reporters that some restaurants may not open until after the building itself is finished. More than eight months after the project was first reported in December 2025, there's still no public tenant list. The website is still placeholder concept art.

Compare that to the other major food project on the boulevard, the Bellaire Market District. Its first phase leased up completely within about three months of hitting the market, a pace that says something about how much appetite there is for retail space here right now. The anchor is Chợ Ba Miền, a 35,000-square-foot Vietnamese food hall built around the idea of showcasing three distinct regional cuisines, slated to open later this year. The developers are already planning a second phase, a $40 million expansion, before the first phase has even fully opened its doors.

So you've got two food hall concepts of similar scale, both promising a cluster of restaurants under one roof, and one has a named anchor tenant and a fully leased first phase while the other has a construction start date and not much else. If you're the kind of resident who likes to guess which project actually opens on schedule, that gap in specificity is your best clue.

The Zoning Vote That Tells You What the City Is Worried About

On May 18, 2026, Bellaire City Council did something that's easy to scroll past in a council agenda but says a lot in plain English: it scrapped the old Urban Village District and replaced it with a new zone called the Bellaire Makers District. The new district runs from Bellaire Boulevard to Spruce Street and from South Rice Avenue to Ferris Street, and it comes with a specific list of what's no longer allowed there: drive-thru restaurants, manufacturing, surface parking lots as standalone businesses, tattoo shops, and mini-storage facilities.

Notice what this zone actually contains today. It's currently anchored by H-E-B, with smaller tenants like Menchie's Frozen Yogurt, Jimmy John's, and Petbar Boutique, plus the site of a future Trader Joe's. This is the same commercial node where a new Chipotle is scheduled to break ground on October 19, 2026, with completion expected by early March 2027.

The city didn't write this ordinance to fix a problem that already exists on this block. There's no drive-thru or storage facility currently sitting there. The rezoning is a preemptive move, a bet that as this node fills in around H-E-B and Trader Joe's, someone was going to try to slot in exactly the kind of auto-oriented tenant the council wants to keep out. Reading a zoning change this way, as a statement about what a city council is trying to head off before it happens rather than what's already there, tells you more about the boulevard's direction than any press release from a developer.

The Project With an Actual Move-In Date

While the two food halls compete for attention, the least flashy project on the list might be the one you can actually pencil into your calendar. Kimco Realty, which owns and manages retail centers nationally, started construction in March 2026 on two retail shell buildings at 5130 Bellaire Blvd. According to the project's builder, those shells are expected to be finished by the end of December 2026. One confirmed tenant already on the list: Cosmic Ice Cream Co., opening a new Bellaire location.

There's no $40 million second phase attached to this one, no renderings promising a cultural experience. It's two shopping center shells and an ice cream shop, and it's the only project on this stretch of the boulevard with both a firm construction start and a realistic finish date inside the same calendar year.

Putting the Timeline Side by Side

What This Actually Means If You Drive This Corridor Every Day

If you're trying to figure out what your regular loop down Bellaire Boulevard will look like a year from now, here's a rough guide based on what's actually confirmed rather than what's promised:

• Before the end of 2026, expect the Kimco shells at 5130 Bellaire Blvd to be finished, with Cosmic Ice Cream Co. as a known tenant. This is the safest bet on the list.
• By spring 2027, the Chipotle near H-E-B should be open, joining the corridor's future Trader Joe's in that same anchored node.
• Sometime in 2026, Chợ Ba Miền should open as the anchor of the Bellaire Market District's first phase, which is already fully leased.
• Spring 2027 at the earliest, and possibly later for individual restaurants, the Bellaire Food District should be structurally complete, though its own developer has said some tenants may not open right when the building does.

The zoning change matters less for what it builds and more for what it forecloses. If you've wondered why nobody's proposed a drive-thru or a storage facility near the H-E-B in the last few months, the Makers District ordinance is why. It's a city government writing its wish list into code before the market tests it.

None of this is a reason to rethink anything about your daily routine on the boulevard today. But if you've noticed the fencing, the permit signs, and the "coming soon" placeholder websites and wondered which of it is real, now you know where to look first and what to actually expect on your calendar.

Jaime and the Jaime Dossett Group live and work in these Fort Bend and Houston-area neighborhoods every day, and we love tracking the small, specific changes that shape daily life here just as much as the big listings. If you're curious how any of this might affect a home you already own or one you're thinking about, schedule your free neighborhood consultation and let's talk through it.