99 Ranch Market hitches Asian post to Houston with first store in Texas

An established chain of Asian grocery stores from California has leased space in a hot corridor of Interstate 10 to open the company’s first Texas location.
The store, 99 Ranch Market, will set up shop in a vacant space formerly occupied by a different kind of international grocery store — Fiesta Mart, which closed at the end of last year. 99 Ranch Market will occupy the 84,000-square-foot former Fiesta space on the northwest corner of I-10 and Blalock in the Blalock Market Shopping Center.
99 Ranch Market, part of Buena Park, Calif.-based Tawa Supermarket Inc., leased the space from Houston-based Weingarten Realty Investors, which was represented by John Wise on the transaction.
The grocery store will offer a variety of Asian products and exotic Far Eastern food when it opens next summer. Products will include Asian delicacies, fresh meat, seafood and produce.
Founded in 1984, Tawa Supermarket has 25 full-service stores in California and Washington. The chain also has licensee stores in Nevada, Georgia and Indonesia.
Jennifer Tsao, a Tawa spokeswoman in California, says the Weingarten site was chosen for the entrance into Texas because it’s conveniently located on the freeway.
The store’s proximity to I-10, however, caused Weingarten to lose quite a bit of the parking lot due to the freeway expansion project several months ago, which is part of the reason Fiesta decided to close its store.
Suzanne Anderson, a regional leasing director with Weingarten, says the parking lot will be restriped to maximize the number of available parking spaces.
“We’re going to have to re-lay out the parking,” she says. “It’s still going to be under what the typical grocery store might have.”
The store itself will gain a new look, but the building will basically stay the same.
“We’re not anticipating major structural changes,” Anderson says. “None of the building is going to be torn down.”For more information see: www.houstonrealtyadvisors.com or www.houstonrealtyadvisors.net or www.edayres.com