Check it Out

South Austin bags massive new H-E-B with food hall and beer garden

The new South Congress Avenue H-E-B will be bigger than the downtown Whole Foods Market flagship.

Courtesy photo

A massive store that will include a food hall and H-E-B’s first-ever beer garden will replace the grocer’s iconic 62-year-old location at South Congress Avenue and East Oltorf Street.

The new store will span more than 100,000 square feet, making it bigger than Whole Foods Market’s flagship store on North Lamar Boulevard, and will replace H-E-B’s oldest location in Austin. The original store measured just 25,000 square feet when it opened in 1957, but has since grown to 69,000 square feet. A typical H-E-B comprises 70,000 to 80,000 square feet.

Aside from the food hall (with indoor and outdoor seating) and the beer garden, the new South Congress store will feature two levels of underground parking, and murals and art installations by local artists.

The old store will be torn down to make way for the new one. Construction is set to start sometime in 2020, with the opening planned for 2022.

“We still have a year of planning ahead of us before we begin construction, and we’re excited to use that time to listen to community members and gain their valuable feedback on how the new store can best serve them,” Jeff Thomas, senior vice president and Central Texas regional manager at H-E-B, says in a May 28 release.

The store at 2400 S. Congress Ave. — one of H-E-B’s busiest locations in Austin — will remain open during the permitting and planning process, which is expected to last until mid- to late 2020. During construction, a temporary store will open at the neighboring Twin Oaks Shopping Center. H-E-B bought the shopping center, at 2315 S. Congress Ave., in 2016.

“We have spent years exploring options for how to address the needs of this community as it continues to grow while ensuring we could maintain the everyday low prices and outstanding customer service our shoppers expect,” says Leslie Sweet, director of public affairs at San Antonio-based H-E-B. “We have a long, exciting road ahead of us, and our customers know we take the greatest care in planning and implementing any changes in our stores. This new store and its construction will be no exception.”

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Who Has the Energy?

Austin City Council approves energy plan to go coal-free by 2035

Photo by Jeremy Doddridge on Unsplash

Austin Energy drafted a plan that the Austin City Council accepted unanimously.

Many are uncertain about the world's collective energy strategy, but the City of Austin has a game plan for the next 10 years. The City Council has unanimously adopted Austin Energy’s Resource, Generation and Climate Protection Plan to 2035.

According to a release from the city, this plan offers "a flexible path to a clean energy future that incorporates the community’s core values of reliability, affordability, environmental sustainability and energy equity."

Members of the public can review extensive documentation, including the 72-page report, at publicinput.com.

The plan authored by Austin Energy includes a number of strategies carried over from 2020. It includes a goal of going completely carbon-free by 2035 in favor of renewable sources like wind and solar; prioritizing solutions that directly impact the customer like better demand response, efficiency programs, solar options, and customer-installed battery storage; and reaching further into exploring more advanced systems like nuclear and geothermal tech or virtual power plants.

It also addresses the need for more responsive solutions during "extreme weather events," both in the heat and cold, which it proposes implementing locally. The lead meteorologist for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) has predicted an overall warmer winter for 2025, but with greater chances of experiencing extreme cold — so this may be an increasingly pressing topic on Austinites' minds.

Despite a sweeping desire to enable more renewable resources, one of the local solutions would be allowing Austin Energy to add more, higher-efficiency natural gas peakers, which would have an emissions cap and only run as an emergency measure. A graph in the report shows that 50 percent of Austin Energy's 2023 generation was renewable, compared to 41 percent of ERCOT's.

"As renewable resources continue to increase in the ERCOT system, we’re seeing new operational challenges," the report explains. "One example is curtailment for these resources when too much power is produced and the system can’t handle it. This makes that resource less valuable to our customers. Local renewable energy, energy storage, energy efficiency and demand response investments avoid these challenges and will be especially important going forward."

“A big part of this plan is readying ourselves to get out of Fayette Power Project,” said Mayor Kirk Watson in the city release. “There must be replacement power to protect customers from energy shortfalls and additional energy market risks. For those who share the goal of getting out of coal, this plan is a step forward.”

Austin Energy created the plan with input from 7,512 customers, including 6,355 residential consumers. Their greatest concern was reliability, ranked as a No. 1 value by 38 percent of participants. There were also stakeholder workshops involving groups like the University of Texas at Austin, Austin ISD, H-E-B, Sierra Club, and Habitat for Humanity.

“We are extremely grateful to Austin City Council and our many community partners and industry experts who played a vital role in shaping Austin Energy’s future,” said Austin Energy general manager Bob Kahn. “We are confident that this plan provides the flexibility Austin Energy needs to meet the challenges ahead while reflecting the priorities of our community.”

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