If you drive the Grand Parkway between Katy and Cypress, you have probably watched this one go up. The new Costco on the east side of the highway, between FM 529 and West Road, went from a bare slab to a full building in what felt like a few weeks. I wanted to see how fast it was really moving, so I flew it twice from the same spot: once on August 11 and again on October 5.
Same site, same angle, 55 days apart. Put the two photos side by side and the progress is easy to read.
August 11, 2026, just before sunset. The warehouse is a poured slab and the gas station is just getting started.
August 11: A Slab and a Lot of Dirt
In August the warehouse was a poured concrete slab with almost nothing standing on it. A few pieces were starting to go up at the back. The front parking field was about half paved, with crew trucks, trailers, and dumpsters parked across it.
Down by the frontage road, the gas station site was still mostly dirt with crews working it. To the west, the rest of the land was open ground with equipment moving dirt around.
October 5, 2026. Walls up, roof on, fuel canopy built, and the parking field paved all the way across.
October 5: A Building, a Canopy, and a Full Parking Lot
Eight weeks later the walls are up and the roof is on. The fuel canopy is built. The parking field is paved all the way across and full of worker trucks, equipment, and staged materials, which tells you how busy the site is now. Out front, crews have cones out and are working along the frontage road.
Access is taking shape too. In August, crews were coming and going from the paved road on the west side. By October the road on the east side looks paved, and a road runs along the back by the pond. When it opens, it looks like you’ll be able to get in from more than one side.
That is a lot of change for under two months. On the ground you would notice it a little at a time on your commute. From the air, with two photos lined up, you see all of it at once.
What the Filings Say
The state filing with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation lists the project as Costco Cypress Warehouse: a 160,000 square foot building on the Grand Parkway in the 77433 zip code, with an estimated cost of about $64.5 million. The fuel center was filed separately. Work was set to start March 1, 2026, with completion targeted for November 6, 2026. Costco has not announced an opening date yet. I’ll be watching for it.
Costco is one of the first confirmed names in Grand Mason, a roughly 400 acre development from NewQuest planned along the east side of the Grand Parkway. A Home Depot of about 134,000 square feet is planned nearby, with construction filed to start this fall.
West Houston Keeps Building
Look past the Costco in either photo and you see the bigger story. Rooftops fill the horizon in every direction. On the far side of the detention pond, new streets are already cut for the next section of homes. Elyson, Bridgeland, and the neighborhoods along the Grand Parkway keep adding families, and retail follows the rooftops. This store should also take some pressure off the Costco at I-10 and the Grand Parkway, which opened in 2014.
I live and work in Cypress, and this corridor is where I spend most of my time in the air. I plan to fly this site again before it opens and post the update here.
Why I Fly the Same Spot Twice
I come from finance and business intelligence, so I look at a site like this the way I would look at a report. One photo is a data point. Two photos from the same spot, weeks apart, give you a trend. You can see which phase is done, what comes next, and where the work is concentrated. For a builder, an owner, or a lender, that is the difference between hearing a project is on schedule and seeing it for yourself.
That is how I run construction progress documentation for clients: the same flight path on a set schedule, so every visit lines up against the last one. If you have a project going up around Cypress, Katy, or the Grand Parkway, reach out and let's talk about what you need to see.
Project details are from the TDLR project filing and reporting by Covering Katy News and My Neighborhood News.