H-E-B Files to Grade Its Big Chisholm Trail Ranch Lot. Here's What That Signals.
H-E-B Files to Grade Its Big Chisholm Trail Ranch Lot. Here's What That Signals.
H-E-B filed paperwork with the city of Fort Worth to start grading its biggest piece of land at the Shops at Chisholm Trail Ranch. That does not mean shovels are in the ground for a store yet, and as it turns out, the permit itself is still working its way through the city's review process. But it is the clearest signal so far that something is coming to that 11.83-acre tract at 5501 Crescent Hill Lane.
Here is what we know, what we do not, and what it could mean if you live nearby.
What the permit actually says
The filing is called an urban forestry permit, case number UFC26-0164, titled "McPherson Blvd. Mass Grading." City of Fort Worth Development Services records show the application was submitted and routed for review on July 15, 2026 (City of Fort Worth Development Services, 2026). The permit was filed by Joe LaCroix of Baird Hampton & Brown, a Fort Worth engineering firm, on behalf of the property owner, H-E-B LP, and it calls for "site grading for future development" at 5501 Crescent Hill Lane (City of Fort Worth Development Services, 2026).
The permit is not a done deal yet. As of July 22, 2026, the city's Urban Forestry Review step was marked "Approved, Part 1 Existing Only," but the Plans Coordination step was marked "Correction Required," and the overall record status shows "Awaiting Client Reply" (City of Fort Worth Development Services, 2026). In plain English, the city sent something back to H-E-B's engineers to fix before this moves further. That is a normal part of the permitting process, not a red flag on its own, but it means grading has not been formally cleared to start.
When the Fort Worth Report asked H-E-B for details, a company spokesperson said the company did not have any information to share at that time (Garcia, 2026a).
How H-E-B got this land in the first place
This did not happen overnight. Records show H-E-B bought roughly 15 acres at the Shops at Chisholm Trail Ranch in deeds filed March 10, 2023, in far south Fort Worth. The site sits on the north side of McPherson Boulevard, between the Chisholm Trail Parkway and Summer Creek Drive (Rudolph, 2023). Back then the land was mostly cleared dirt with a lone Raising Cane's next door.
Three years later, Tarrant Appraisal District records give us a clearer picture of how that original 15 acres got split up. H-E-B owns two smaller tracts off McPherson Boulevard purchased in 2023: a nearly 2-acre tract with two pad sites valued at $1.2 million, and a 1.2-acre tract with two pad sites valued at $792,870 (Garcia, 2026a). Those pad sites are the smaller parcels along the road frontage, the kind of land grocery chains often sell or lease off to restaurants and banks once they buy a big block. That likely explains why H-E-B's name shows up on more than one spot on the map even though only one address, the 11.83-acre lot at 5501 Crescent Hill Lane, is the one now filed for grading.
White Castle is already building next door
H-E-B is not the only name filing paperwork out there. White Castle plans to spend $2.1 million to build a 2,764-square-foot restaurant as part of the Shops at Chisholm Trail Ranch, which sits inside the larger Chisholm Trail Ranch master-planned community east of Benbrook Lake. The restaurant will be located at 6013 Retail Way, near the intersection of Chisholm Trail Parkway and McPherson Boulevard, and will have double drive-thru lanes with a canopy and patio seating (Garcia, 2026b). It will be the southernmost White Castle restaurant in the nation, and construction is expected to begin in January 2027 and finish by April (Garcia, 2026b).
That is a real, funded project with a filed budget already moving forward. The H-E-B piece is still one step earlier in the process, and now we know it has at least one open correction to clear first.
So what could H-E-B actually build on 11.83 acres?
Here is where I'll put on my Realtor hat instead of my reporter hat. Nobody has confirmed a store design for this lot. But we have two useful comparisons to size it up against.
H-E-B's Walsh Ranch location, near the Fort Worth-Aledo border, sits on 18.2 acres and will be about 127,754 square feet, at an estimated construction cost of $18 million (Francis, 2025). That store is built on H-E-B's larger, newer prototype, the kind that includes a full-service pharmacy and a sit-down barbecue restaurant.
On the smaller end, H-E-B's Stephenville store sits on a 5.04-acre lot, according to Erath County tax records, and has served that town since 1991. That is an older H-E-B built decades ago, on a lot less than half the size of the Chisholm Trail Ranch tract, and it has run for over 30 years without needing the scale of a Walsh Ranch-style flagship.
[Josh: add your take here on whether the Chisholm Trail Ranch site, sitting between the Stephenville and Walsh Ranch comparisons in size, points toward a mid-size format H-E-B rather than either extreme, and why that matters for buyers in this corridor]
My read, and this is opinion, not confirmed fact: 11.83 acres is closer to the Walsh Ranch scale than the Stephenville scale, but it is still noticeably tighter than Walsh Ranch's 18.2 acres. That does not rule out a full-size store. It could mean structured parking, a smaller footprint, or a different format altogether. Until H-E-B clears the open correction on this permit and files an actual building permit or a state construction filing with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, we are reading tea leaves off a grading application. I would not bank on a specific square footage yet.
What this means if you live nearby
A confirmed H-E-B, even a smaller one, changes how buyers think about a neighborhood. Grocery access is one of the first things move-up buyers and empty-nesters ask about when they are comparing far south and southwest Fort Worth against Benbrook.
If you are watching this corridor from Westpark or Timbercreek in Benbrook, this is worth tracking. Those communities sit up Chisholm Trail Parkway from this site, and added retail like this, plus a confirmed White Castle, adds to the case for the area's long-term convenience. That is not a promise of rising values. It is a real, current amenity story, and it is one more thing to point to when a listing goes on the market in that part of the Westoplex.
None of this is confirmed for the H-E-B store itself yet, and the permit's own record shows it still has a correction to clear. The next real markers to watch for are that correction getting resolved, followed by a building permit or a state filing with actual square footage and a construction budget attached, the same kind of paperwork that already exists for Walsh Ranch and for White Castle. I will update this post the moment either happens.
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References
City of Fort Worth Development Services. (2026, July 22). Urban forestry permit no. UFC26-0164: McPherson Blvd. Mass Grading [Permit record]. Accela Citizen Access.
Francis, B. (2025, July 8). H-E-B files plans for store at Walsh Ranch, marks second Fort Worth location. Fort Worth Report. https://fortworthreport.org/2025/07/08/h-e-b-files-plans-for-store-at-walsh-ranch-marks-second-fort-worth-location/
Garcia, E. E. (2026a, July 15). H-E-B to start development of Chisholm Trail site near planned White Castle restaurant. Fort Worth Report. https://fortworthreport.org/2026/07/15/h-e-b-to-start-development-of-chisholm-trail-site-near-planned-white-castle-restaurant/
Garcia, E. E. (2026b, July 2). White Castle is coming to Fort Worth. Find out where the chain plans to build. Fort Worth Report. https://fortworthreport.org/2026/07/02/white-castle-is-coming-to-fort-worth-find-out-where-the-chain-plans-to-build/
Rudolph, J. (2023, March 20). H-E-B appears to have plans to build another Fort Worth grocery store. Here's where. Fort Worth Star-Telegram. https://www.aol.com/news/h-e-b-appears-plans-222710657.html