Montgomery Fixes Up Its Downtown, and an H-E-B Lands This Year

We're widening what this paper covers. Magnolia doesn't stop at the city-limit sign, and neither does the growth. So we're starting to look up the road at the towns Magnolia families drive to and through every week. Montgomery is first, because a lot is happening there at once.

The headline project is McCown Street. The city plans to spend about $2.3 million to rework a key stretch of its historic downtown, and the money comes from the Montgomery Economic Development Corp. rather than the general property-tax fund. The work is in final design and headed for competitive bidding. When it's done, the goal is simpler than it sounds: easier parking, safer walking, and a downtown people want to linger in instead of just pass through.

Alongside the street work, the city is modernizing ordinances it hasn't fully updated in decades. A final draft is expected back before the City Council this spring. The stated aim is to make room for new building while keeping the old-town look intact, with standards covering things like where a building sits on its lot, awnings, and storefront character. That balance is the whole fight in a growing small town. Montgomery is trying to write it down before the growth writes it for them.

Then there's the grocery store. An H-E-B is expected to be finished by the last quarter of 2026. For a town where the nearest full grocery run has long meant a drive, that's a real change to daily life, and it tends to pull other stores in behind it.

The numbers explain the urgency. City officials put Montgomery at roughly 43 percent built out, with room to grow toward about 20,000 residents inside its five square miles. Sales-tax revenue climbed more than 153 percent between 2020 and 2025, according to Texas Comptroller figures. Money and people are arriving faster than the old rules were built for. Last September the council also raised water and wastewater impact fees on new development by about 17 percent, one of the quieter signs that a town is deciding new growth should help pay for the pipes it needs.

Sara Countryman, reelected mayor this past May, and City Administrator Brent Walker are steering most of this. We'll keep watching how the downtown work lands and what opens next. If you live or do business up that way and want Magnolia's paper covering your town too, tell us what we should be looking at.