Above: concept plan for the Circle Oak development in Richmond. Image courtesy of Johnson Development.
If you have driven the I-69 stretch between Rosenberg and the George Ranch lately, you have probably noticed something changing on both sides of the freeway. That is Circle Oak, one of the largest mixed use developments underway in Fort Bend right now, and it just got its most attention grabbing tenant announcement to date. Sam's Club is coming.
I have been writing this month about the growth story quietly reshaping Fort Bend, from what is being built around Sugar Land to the deep dives on The George, Lake Pointe Green, and the new MD Anderson cancer center. Circle Oak belongs on the same list. Here is what is actually going in, when, and what it means for anyone buying, selling, or already owning around Richmond and Rosenberg.
What Circle Oak actually is
Circle Oak is a mixed use community being built on roughly 285 acres of Fort Bend County land owned by the George Foundation and developed in partnership with the City of Richmond. The George Foundation is a charitable trust tied to the same historic George family whose land also gave us The George master planned community, and to date the foundation has awarded more than $180 million in grants to Fort Bend County nonprofits and scholarship recipients. Land revenue from Circle Oak feeds that mission, which is why the foundation and the city are working so closely to get this one right.
The site is split by I-69 / US Highway 59, which means both halves get freeway visibility, and each half has a distinct role. North of the freeway is the retail and dining anchor. South of the freeway is where the big new development activity is layering in right now.
North of I-69: Circle Oak Crossing, anchored by HEB
The north side is branded Circle Oak Crossing and it is already the beating heart of the project. The reason is HEB. The HEB Richmond Market at Circle Oak recorded 2.8 million visits in 2025, ranking it as HEB's top performing property in Fort Bend County, per George Foundation CEO Roger Adamson in a recent update to the Richmond City Commission. That is a genuinely staggering number of trips for a single grocery anchor, and it explains why the vision for Circle Oak Crossing is a walkable, mixed use destination around the store with unique restaurants and neighborhood retail. When your anchor tenant is doing that kind of volume, the surrounding retail follows because the traffic is already there.
For a new area anchor, that is the sweet spot. Buyers relocating to Richmond, Rosenberg, or the west side of the county now have a real, functional retail hub within a short drive, which was arguably the biggest weakness on the west side compared to the Sugar Land core. That gap is closing.
Sam's Club just made it official
The freshest news on Circle Oak, and the reason it is showing up in headlines this week, is that Sam's Club has confirmed it is coming to the development, as reported by KHOU. That is a very big deal for a very simple reason: Sam's Club does not build a new club on speculation. When they pick a site, they have run their own demographics, traffic counts, and household income math, and they only sign when the numbers work. A new Sam's Club is a private sector signal that the population and household spending in this corner of Fort Bend has crossed a real threshold.
A few caveats worth stating cleanly. The public reporting so far confirms Sam's Club is coming to Circle Oak. Specific store size, opening date, and jobs figures beyond the headline are behind a paywall on the Houston Business Journal, and I have not been able to independently verify those specifics from a free source yet, so I am going to hold off putting numbers in this post that I cannot back up. If you want to know when it opens or how big it will be, watch for the follow up coverage, and I will update this post as those details land.
South of I-69: where the current activity is
Cross the freeway to the south side and this is where the current build out is most visible. Per the recent city update, the south side of Circle Oak already has several projects underway or planned:
- The Ryon Apartments on about 13 acres
- Kelsey Seybold on a 4 acre tract, a new 3 story medical office building
- A national warehouse taking down another tract
And that is just the anchors. The plans for the rest of the south side call for a mix of big box and neighborhood retail, restaurants, office space, medical facilities, and a high density residential community. In plain English, this side of Circle Oak is being planned as a walkable mid density village rather than a strip mall parking lot, with masonry architecture required on both sides of the freeway to keep the corridor visually unified.
There is also a specific residential project already on the books. Circle Oak II Apartments was registered with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation in February 2026, at 4435 FM 762 Road. It is a 336 unit for rent apartment community with a 6,000 square foot clubhouse, valued around $2 million on the initial filing, with a listed start of June 2026 and completion by February 2028. That is a two year build for a single apartment community on this one tract, which tells you the scale we are working with.
The concept plan, section by section
The concept plan prepared by LJA for the George Ranch Foundation gives you the breakdown by land use category on the north tract, which comes in at about 284.7 acres in its own right. From the land use analysis:
- Commercial: roughly 55 acres
- Mixed use: about 31.5 acres
- Multi family residential: about 25.9 acres
- Single family residential: about 9.9 acres
- Civic uses: about 4 acres
- Open space: about 7.9 acres
- Plus roadways, drainage, and Rabbs Bayou making up the rest
The important read from that mix is the balance. Circle Oak is not a subdivision with a strip mall out front. It is a genuine mixed use place, roughly a third commercial and mixed use, roughly a third residential across single and multi family, and the rest reserved for civic and green space. That balance is what makes a place feel like a neighborhood rather than a parking lot, and it is the difference between a project that lifts nearby home values and one that just adds traffic.
Why this matters for Richmond and Rosenberg home values
Now the real question, because we are a real estate blog first. What does a project like this actually do for the neighborhoods around it?
The short answer is that it raises the ceiling. When an area lacks a serious retail anchor and quality daily services, buyers, especially relocators, discount it. Once a top volume HEB, a Sam's Club, a medical office cluster with Kelsey Seybold, apartments, restaurants, and civic space all show up within a mile of one another, that same area suddenly becomes a place where a family can plant roots without long drives for everything. That shift takes years to show up fully in home prices, but it is the exact ingredient the west side of Fort Bend has been missing.
If you are considering a home in Richmond, Rosenberg, or nearby communities and neighborhoods in that stretch, this is the kind of quiet infrastructure that supports value over the long haul. For where the population and job growth story fits, our Sugar Land home values have a floor piece applies to the whole county, and the ultimate guide to Sugar Land neighborhoods gives you the frame for comparing across the area.
What it means for The George buyers
If you are shopping the new master planned communities out west, Circle Oak becomes even more important because it is close to The George, the 4,000 home Johnson Development community on former George Ranch land. Those two projects were not planned in a vacuum, they share the same underlying land legacy through the George Foundation, and they are meant to work together. A brand new community needs its own daily retail base, and Circle Oak is going to be that base for a lot of buyers coming into The George.
The practical takeaway if you are in escrow or shopping at The George: your grocery store is HEB Circle Oak Crossing, your bulk shopping will be a brand new Sam's Club a few minutes down the freeway, your doctor is a Kelsey Seybold medical office at Circle Oak, and your weekend restaurants sit in a walkable district that did not exist before this project. That is a materially better daily experience than a new community sitting on its own in an empty field, and it should be a factor in your buy decision.
For anyone already owning nearby
If you already own around Richmond, Rosenberg, or the FM 762 corridor, this project is quietly working for you the way MD Anderson is quietly working for Sugar Land homeowners. It will not spike your Zillow estimate this quarter. It will make your area more desirable to the next wave of buyers year after year as each tenant opens and each new home delivers, and that is exactly the kind of durable demand support that carries neighborhoods through cycles. If you are weighing a sale in the near term, the current price and inventory picture is in the Sugar Land mid year 2026 market update, which covers the wider county too.
The honest caveats
A few grounded notes so I am not selling you the brochure.
First, mixed use developments deliver in phases over years, not all at once, and Circle Oak's plans stretch into 2028 and beyond on the residential side. Some of what is described here is anchors already open (HEB), some is under construction or filed (Circle Oak II, Sam's Club), and some is planned use categories waiting on the next tenant announcement. Second, this is Richmond, not Sugar Land, and the two markets carry different school districts, different HOA and MUD structures, and different price bands, so do not assume Sugar Land comps apply directly. If you are new to the area and untangling those distinctions, the moving to Sugar Land from out of state guide covers the broader relocation checklist that applies here too. Third, big retail tenants like Sam's Club can shift construction timing, and specific opening dates should be treated as targets, not promises, until the ribbon actually gets cut.
None of that dents the story. A charitable foundation with real money, a growing city, a top volume grocery already in the ground, a national wholesale club committed, medical office rising, apartments filed, and a concept plan that carves out real space for people rather than just parking. That is the recipe for a corner of Fort Bend that quietly becomes one of the areas people will be recommending five years from now. Sugar Land already earned its Top 10 Best Places to Live ranking on this same pattern of layered public and private investment. Watch the same thing happen on the west side.
If you want to talk through what Circle Oak means for a specific purchase, a home you are considering selling, or the neighborhoods around it, reach out and I will give you the straight version for your situation.
Sources: KHOU, Sam's Club coming to 285 acre Circle Oak development near Richmond; City of Richmond, Circle Oak development update; Fort Bend Herald, Commission receives update on Circle Oak development.
