Walk past the RH Gallery at 4030 Westheimer and look across the street. There's a construction fence, some heavy equipment, and a spot on Highland Village's own site map labeled "Future RH (Summer 2026)." If you've been checking that map every few months waiting for an opening date, you've been checking the wrong document.
The shopping center's map is marketing copy. The state of Texas has a different version of events. A construction permit filed with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, registered in August 2025, puts the project's estimated completion at January 2027, roughly a year past what the center's own signage promises. Neither version is wrong exactly. They're just answering different questions, and the gap between them tells you something the map alone never will: how projects like this one actually move once they leave the rendering stage.
What the center's map won't tell you
The building going up at 4085 Westheimer, directly across from the existing RH Gallery, is registered under the developer name 4085 Westheimer Holdings LTD, with Nelsen Partners as the design firm of record. The state filing puts the project at roughly 45,000 square feet with an estimated construction value of $12.5 million. None of that appears on the shopping center's tenant map, which only offers a name and a season.
| What you'd learn from | Highland Village's site map | The state construction filing |
|---|---|---|
| Opening timeline | "Future RH (Summer 2026)" | Estimated completion January 2027 |
| Project scope | Not specified | About 45,000 square feet, $12.5 million estimated value |
| Layout | Not specified | Furniture retail on two floors, a restaurant floor with indoor dining, outdoor retail space on the ground floor and rooftop |
For anyone who's watched the fencing go up and wondered why the timeline keeps drifting, this is the answer. A shopping center's website gets updated when someone remembers to update it. A construction permit gets updated when the actual work changes.
The corner used to be a Starbucks
The building this project replaces has its own story, and it's worth knowing if you've ever wondered why that particular stretch of sidewalk looks unfinished. The space at 4081 Westheimer was one of Houston's original Starbucks locations, open since November 1994 and one of the first three the chain brought to the city along Westheimer Road. It ran for nearly thirty years before closing abruptly in 2023, right as construction crews demolished the entrance ramp and the sidewalk in front of it. Google quietly relisted it as permanently closed. Next door, the children's retailer Janie & Jack and the former home furnishings store Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams both lost portions of their own sidewalks in that same round of work.
Janie & Jack has continued operating in that building since. The RH project's site plan calls for demolishing it, which means the retailer will need a new home before the new store can open, whenever that turns out to be. It's one more reason the "summer 2026" label on the map was always closer to a hope than a schedule.
Two floors of furniture, one floor of dinner
The layout described in the state filing is more ambitious than the current RH Gallery a block away. The existing store at 4030 Westheimer has occupied roughly 30,000 square feet across three floors since 2011, with a rooftop terrace but no restaurant. The new building would add a fourth floor and a genuinely different program: furniture retail on the ground and second floors, a restaurant with indoor dining on the third floor, and outdoor retail space on both the ground level and the rooftop.
If it opens as planned, this would be RH's first restaurant location in Houston, following the model the company built into its Dallas store during a $40 million renovation completed in 2021. What isn't settled, at least not in anything filed publicly so far, is whether the current three-story Gallery closes once the new building opens or continues operating as a second location. Both companies involved have been quiet on that point, and there's no reason to guess at an answer that hasn't been given.
The rest of the shopping center is moving on its own clock
The RH project is the biggest thing happening at Highland Village, but it's not the only thing, and the smaller changes have moved a lot faster than a four-story building with a rooftop restaurant ever could. Looking at the same tenant map:
- Pottery Barn Kids arrived in May 2025.
- An apparel tenant was slated to open by summer 2025, but as of the map's own late 2025 update, that space was still listed by category only, with no name attached.
- Sprinkles, the cupcake shop that had been a fixture for shoppers making a stop between errands, closed by mid-2025.
- The former Smith & Wollensky space is undergoing its own redevelopment, and as of this writing there's no public confirmation of what's replacing it.
- A handful of storefronts are simply marked "Vacant" on the same map that lists RH's future restaurant, sitting quietly alongside long-running anchors like Crate & Barrel, Apple, Sephora, Anthropologie, Escalante's, and RA Sushi.
None of this required a Planning Commission filing or a state permit. Small leases turn over on their own timeline, set by the retailer and the landlord, not by variance requests and setback approvals. That's the real pattern here: the flagship project with the rooftop restaurant is the slowest-moving thing on the block, while the ordinary churn of storefronts around it keeps happening whether anyone's tracking it or not.
How to actually watch what's changing
If you want a more current read than the shopping center's own map, the better sources are public ones. Houston Planning Commission meeting documents and state contractor filings get updated as projects change hands, get delayed, or clear new approvals, which is a more honest signal than a static webpage. Coverage from Bisnow and the Houston Chronicle followed the RH project through its Planning Commission variance request in early 2025, and that same public record is what eventually surfaced the January 2027 completion estimate.
None of this changes much about how the block feels day to day. The corner of Westheimer and Suffolk will keep looking like a construction site for a while longer, and the rooftop restaurant that's supposed to anchor the new building isn't opening this summer no matter what the map says. In the meantime, the smaller storefronts around it keep rotating on their own schedule, cupcake shop to kids' furniture, without needing anyone's permission or a permit number to do it.
If you're curious about how a specific corner of Houston is actually changing, not just what the signage promises, that's the kind of question Thomas Eureste and the team spend their time answering. Reach out anytime you want a straight read on what's really happening in a neighborhood you already call home.
