If you live in Memorial West, your two most-used destinations both went behind construction fencing this spring within about eight weeks of each other. Memorial Park Conservancy broke ground on the 100-acre Memorial Groves project on March 6, and MetroNational's $8.8 million first-phase demolition of the western end of Memorial City Mall was scheduled to start in May. Both wrap in 2027. Neither will look the way you remember it by the time your holiday guests arrive.
That parallel is the actual story of the year here. Two anchor institutions, both roughly $50 million in scope, both mid-teardown, both keeping their daily rhythms running while the crews work. Knowing which pieces stay open and when the changes land is more useful right now than any list of the ten best things to do in Memorial.
Memorial Groves: the piece of the park most people have never walked
Memorial Groves occupies the tract between Union Pacific's rail line and West Memorial Loop Drive. It is the section of the park with the densest cluster of Camp Logan archaeological findings, and until this year it has been the least programmed corner of the park. That changes with a design by Nelson Byrd Woltz, the same landscape architecture firm behind the Kinder Land Bridge.
The centerpiece is a grid of more than 2,000 bald cypress trees planted around the existing canopy, arranged to read as soldiers in formation. On the north end, two 12-foot earthen mounds frame a reflective water feature inspired by trench warfare geometry. Interpretive elements throughout the site will include the unearthed foundations of Camp Logan buildings, a new visitor center at the park's primary entrance, a playground, restrooms, and expanded parking. The project also formally recognizes the story of the all-Black 24th Infantry Regiment and the 1917 Camp Logan Mutiny, a piece of Houston history that has never had a permanent site of commemoration inside the park.
Chris Ballard, president and CEO of Memorial Park Conservancy, said at the March 6 groundbreaking that the goal is a space for reflection, recreation, and learning that connects the park's founding purpose with its everyday use. The $50.5 million budget is anchored by an additional $10 million from Kinder Foundation, alongside $7.5 million each from John L. Nau III and the Brown Foundation. Target completion is late 2027.
What stays open while Memorial Groves is under construction
The single most useful thing to know: the Seymour Lieberman Trail remains open throughout the build. That means your normal run does not change. What shifts is parking and access on the west side of the loop.
Specifically, during Memorial Groves construction you can still count on:
- The Kinder Land Bridge and Cyvia and Melvyn Wolff Prairie, including the two 35-foot mounds and the solstice and equinox markers on the east side of the lawn
- Clay Family Eastern Glades and its lot at the 610 entry on Memorial Drive, which sits closest to Hines Lake and the east side of the Land Bridge
- The Sports Complex, the Running Complex, and the Cullen Running Trails Center at 7575 N. Picnic Lane
- The Hogg Bird Sanctuary at the southeast corner, which remains one of the better inner-Loop birding spots and is not affected by any current construction
If you have been running the same loop for a decade, none of that changes. What changes is that the west lot fills faster during preliminary site work, and the tree cover along West Memorial Loop Drive will look thin for a couple of seasons before the cypress grid reads as intended.
The Land Bridge is entering its best window
Here is a piece of local timing that gets lost in the construction noise. The Land Bridge prairie hits peak wildflower display twice a year, in April through June and again in October through November. The second window is the one to plan around this fall. The prairie plantings are into their fourth full growing season, which is roughly when native Gulf Coast grasses and forbs finish establishing and start behaving like a mature prairie rather than a seeded field. Little bluestem, Indiangrass, and switchgrass all reach full height by mid-October.
The Land Bridge itself opened in February 2023 after a decade of planning and reconnected the north and south halves of the park across four tunnels that carry roughly 55,000 vehicles a day beneath the earthwork. The 45 acres of restored native prairie on top is the largest restored coastal prairie in any American city park. Fall 2026 will be the first time most Memorial West residents see it at full seasonal saturation.
The mirror image is the point. Two of the neighborhood's defining places are in a middle chapter this year. Memorial Park is adding a piece it has been missing since 1924. Memorial City is losing a piece most people assumed would always be there.
Memorial City's parallel timeline
Across Loop 610, the mall is in the middle of its own reset. MetroNational filed plans with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation to demolish roughly 216,000 square feet of interior space and 190,000 square feet of exterior space, with the $8.8 million first phase scheduled to begin in May 2026 and the broader interior work completing April 1, 2027. The parking and access work, which includes deck restriping, new wayfinding, and rerouted entries around the south side, is expected to wrap in January 2027.
The rest of the mall stays open the entire time. Macy's, Dillard's, JCPenney, the Target across the street, the AMC and Cinemark theaters, and the east-side food court all keep their normal hours. What you will lose is the ice rink, which is scheduled to close by August 2026 after the January 13 ammonia leak that forced a full mall evacuation earlier in the year. The Houston Tinplate Operators Society model-train exhibit closed to the public on March 31.
Here is the two-project cheat sheet on one page:
| Project | Ground broken | Public opening | Scope | Design lead |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Memorial Groves | March 6, 2026 | Late 2027 | 100 acres, 2,000 bald cypress, visitor center, playground | Nelson Byrd Woltz |
| Memorial City Mall redevelopment | May 2026 | April 2027 (interior); January 2027 (parking) | ~216,000 sf interior demo, new lobby, relocated entrance | MetroNational |
| Greenside at Memorial City | Underway | 2026 | 35,000 sf, three buildings, ~1 acre outdoor | MetroNational + Radom Capital |
The one thing actually opening this year
Greenside is the piece of the Memorial City transformation that lands in 2026 rather than 2027. Located at 1085 Gessner Road, it is a 35,000-square-foot adaptive-reuse project by MetroNational and Radom Capital with retail, restaurants, offices, and wellness concepts across three buildings and about an acre of outdoor space. It is the immediate answer to the question of what a Memorial City resident should look forward to before the mall itself reemerges.
The broader 27-acre Memorial Town Square concept that MetroNational unveiled at Barryknoll Lane and Gessner Road in 2022, with Gensler as design architect and OJB as landscape architect, remains under evaluation. Greenside is a smaller, faster proof of the same idea: that Memorial City works better as a walkable district than as an enclosed mall with a moat of surface parking.
How a resident's 2026 actually looks
If you live inside the 77024 loop of Memorial, the practical version of this year is short. Your morning trail run is unchanged. Your grocery run to the Kroger across from the mall is unchanged. Your Saturday coffee at any of the Memorial Drive cafes is unchanged. What you gain is a fall walk on a maturing prairie and a new mid-block wellness and dining pocket at Greenside. What you lose is the ice rink and the model-train case that anchored the old mall's central court. What you get in 2027 is a memorial forest that the park's own name has been promising since 1924 and a mall entrance that finally does what the western half of the building has needed for a decade.
Two construction fences. One neighborhood. A better version of both anchors on the other side of them.
If you are thinking about how these projects change what a home in Memorial West is worth over the next 18 months, or you are weighing a renovation ahead of a listing while the mall and park are still mid-build, Arriaga Realty works exclusively at that intersection. Schedule a Free Valuation & Consultation to talk through what your block looks like against the 2027 timeline.
