Former Gulf Greyhound Park In La Marque Secures First Retail Leases For Redevelopment
McDonald’s, Chipotle and Raising Cane’s are among the first retail leases planned for the redevelopment of 7 acres of the former Gulf Greyhound Park in La Marque.
Main Street Commercial Partners last October purchased 7 acres of the 88-acre site from JMK5 Holdings LLC, the Houston Business Journal reported. The land is adjacent to JMK5's larger redevelopment project, which developer Jerome Karam had said would become "a Las Vegas style concert ground" that would attract A-list entertainment.
Karam told HBJ in February that he had another 8.5 acres under contract to sell, and planned to sell another 17 or 18 acres, while keeping the rest for redevelopment. He originally planned to open the entertainment venue this year, but HBJ reported that he did not respond to a text message seeking comment for its article.
In addition to the three fast-casual restaurants that will all have drive-thrus, Main Street is in lease negotiations with three additional restaurant tenants, Main Street partners Neal Wade and Anderson Smith told HBJ. There are seven pad sites on their portion of the land.
The site is at the corner of FM 1764 and FM 2004, adjacent to the parking lot of the former racetrack and near a Walmart and Sam's Club, HBJ reported. Main Street is in the permitting process and hopes to start construction on roads and utilities by the end of the year.
“One of the big things that really drew us to the site was just the regionality of the intersection,” Smith told the HBJ. “It’s centrally located between Galveston and League City, and … Walmart pulls from all the neighborhoods to the west, like Santa Fe and Hitchcock, so it's got a really large trade area.”
Gulf Greyhound Park Simulcast & Event Center shut down in June 2020 after almost 30 years in business, citing a decline in bets for several years prior. Only West Virginia still has active dog racing tracks, while Texas is one of seven other states that still allows dog racing but has no active tracks, according to GREY2K USA, a nonprofit committed to ending dog racing.
