Which construction fence in Friendswood comes down first? The project at 1500 W. Parkwood Ave. is already finished. Castle Biosciences says in its most recent quarterly filing that its new Friendswood headquarters was substantially completed in February 2026, and the company now lists Suite 400 at that address as its principal executive office.
Most talk about Friendswood development focuses on Friendswood City Center on East FM 528, a 106-acre project the Houston Chronicle has valued at $750 million. Put every active project on one calendar and the order runs close to backward from the attention each one gets. The finished project and the next one to finish are a four-story office building and a striping contract. The road and downtown projects come years later. The biggest plan in town has no opening date.
Here's how the calendar lines up, project by project, using the city's October 7, 2026 development map and the most recent reporting on each project.
West Parkwood already has its new building
The city map describes the Castle Biosciences building as four stories and 86,151 square feet, with entrances from both W. Parkwood Ave. and Friendswood Parkway. Before the move, the company occupied two floors of the building at 505 S. Friendswood Drive.
The building matters for more than the people who work there, because of the deal behind it. The 25-acre site was platted into four commercial reserves plus one drainage reserve. Castle's building uses one reserve, and the city map says the others "will be available for future development." The project falls inside Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone #2. Under that agreement, Castle builds two lanes of Friendswood Parkway and dedicates the detention pond as a public pond. The city map says TIRZ #2 as a whole is planned for commercial and retail space, mixed use, residential estate lots, and the Friendswood Parkway extension.
Across the road, the map shows Parkwood District Phase 2 at 1503 W. Parkwood Ave. It's a one-story, 9,956-square-foot retail shell meant to match the existing building at 1501 W. Parkwood Ave., with 68 more parking spaces.
The new businesses along this road have already started arriving.
- Good Good Thai Kitchen, 146 W. Parkwood Ave., opened Sept. 21. Community Impact reported the menu includes fried rice, curries, noodle soups, sweet sticky rice, roti, and Thai beer, sake and wine. The restaurant's own site features its khao soi, pad see ew and drunken noodles.
- Parkwood American Grille, 2131 W. Parkwood Ave., opened Sept. 1 in the former Rancho Mexican Restaurant building. It comes from owner Raz Halili and executive chef Joe Cervantez, who was previously head chef at Killen's Steakhouse in Pearland. In a release reported by Community Impact, Halili said he wants it to be "the kind of place where guests can enjoy a nice dinner and an elevated level of food, wine and hospitality, but still make it their middle-of-the-week spot."
- Blitz Flow Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, 709 W. Parkwood Ave., Ste. D, listed Nov. 7 as its opening date. Black belt Professor Ygor Mauricio leads the studio, and programs cover kids ages 4 to 12, teens, adults, and women-only classes, according to Community Impact.
A few blocks off Parkwood, JETSET Pilates announced a November opening at 106 Whispering Pines Ave., Ste. 107. It's a reformer studio with fundamentals, full-body, upper- and lower-body, and core-focused group classes.
The next change on FM 528 is paint and turn lanes
The next project likely to change a Friendswood drive is also one of the cheapest on the city's list. It's a combined TxDOT project costing $373,983. It adds striping and intersection work at FM 518 and FM 528 to create dual left-turn lanes on FM 518. It also restripes the FM 528 and Sunset Drive intersection to add a second southbound left-turn lane from Sunset onto FM 528. Community Impact reported Oct. 2 that TxDOT let the project for construction in September 2026 and that it was moving through contract award and pre-construction. The money comes from Houston-Galveston Area Council Carry-Over Spend Down funds.
The bigger fix on Sunset is further back in line. The Sunset Drive signal project costs $4 million. It upgrades traffic signals along the corridor and turns the Briarmeadow Drive intersection from an all-way stop into a full signal. City Council approved the engineering services agreement in September 2026, and the project is now in final design. On this corridor, the cheap restriping is ahead of the $4 million signal work.
Downtown follows the same pattern of small projects first. The Augusta Kelly Office Building at 403 Laurel is a two-story building with 6,594 square feet of retail and office space. Its head-in parking on Laurel is designed to match the APA Designs and Lola's project next door, and the city plans a future 6-foot sidewalk on the opposite side of Laurel. The city issued a commercial sitework permit on June 1, 2026. The project's Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation registration lists a scheduled completion date of Jan. 1, 2027.
Blackhawk Boulevard is a late-2027 road
The fences on Blackhawk Boulevard are on a much longer schedule. Phase II-C rebuilds the remaining segments from Pennystone Way to FM 2351 and from Thursa Lane to FM 528. As of Community Impact's Oct. 2 update, crews had installed a 12-inch water line and laterals. Storm-sewer work was ongoing, a 24-inch water line was expected to start soon, and pavement removal had begun in places. The phase costs $8.6 million, paid for by the city's Street Maintenance Sales Tax Fund, a partnership with Harris County Precinct 2, and water and sewer funds. Substantial completion is expected in late 2027.
Put next to the turn-lane project, the math is clear. Blackhawk costs about 23 times as much and has about a year of work still ahead. Most of what's happening there right now is underground. Utility lines go in before new pavement does, so the most visible progress comes late in the job.
The same city budget source is lined up behind Blackhawk. The Polly Ranch Subdivision and Windsong Lane street projects, together $9 million from the Street Maintenance Sales Tax Fund, are in preliminary engineering. Construction is expected from summer to early fall 2027.
Downtown's largest building is a 2028 project
The Albritton at 408 S. Friendswood Drive is the biggest project downtown, and it's well underway. In July 2026, Connect CRE reported that developer Tannos Development Group secured $28 million in mid-construction financing for the 163,176-square-foot project. The plans include 111 apartments, 11,000 square feet of ground-floor retail, 9,000 square feet of office space, and a 72,000-square-foot parking garage behind a limestone façade. Completion is expected in 2028.
The city map shows the parts of the project the public will use. Retail and restaurant space fronts S. Friendswood Drive, and there will be outdoor seating and wide sidewalks along that frontage. A dog park and improved outdoor space are planned between the building and the Friendswood Library. Those features arrive when the building does, which puts them at least a year after Blackhawk.
Up the road at 650 and 800 N. Friendswood Drive, The Bristol is planned as a 232-unit community for residents 55 and older, with two 18,000-square-foot commercial buildings along FM 518. Building permits for phase one, which covers 119 units and the amenity center, were issued in February 2026.
City Center is the biggest plan and the last one on the calendar
Friendswood City Center in the 3800 block of East FM 528 is the largest of these projects and has the least on its calendar. The development partnership is Tannos Development Group and Wolfgramm Capital. The city amended the project's planned unit development on Jan. 5, 2026, allowing taller buildings, more stories and higher residential density.
The plan is large. It includes 500 multifamily units, office buildings meant to work as a small employment center, a hotel, and 4.4 miles of trails, with 2.2 of those miles in gravel through the green space. A lake will provide detention and regional flood mitigation along Clear Creek and will also be open to canoes and kayaks, with public access and parking off a new Blackhawk Boulevard extension running from FM 528 to Bay Area Boulevard. The city map shows five retail shell buildings planned along FM 528, at 3711, 3715, 3723, 3727 and 4001. They have rear entrances on Larabee Way, and 3711 is the only lot in City Center where a gas station is allowed.
The anchor is a 90,000-square-foot B&B Theatres complex. The Houston Chronicle reported it will have 14 auditoriums, a full-service restaurant, an arcade, an immersive bowling alley, four specialty large-format screens, and go-karts on the upper levels. As of the Chronicle's February report, site work on the roads, a bridge and the lake's retaining wall was nearing completion.
City Center is the development most people in town talk about, yet it's the one Friendswood project here with no completion year attached to it. The Castle building is finished, the turn lanes are funded and let, and the Laurel Street building is scheduled for completion in January. Blackhawk is due in late 2027 and The Albritton in 2028.
I put this timeline together because questions about construction in Friendswood often turn into questions about a specific street, such as which corner will change and which drive will be torn up for another year. If you're weighing a home near FM 528, Blackhawk or downtown and want to know how these schedules affect that block, Nova Gen Realty Group can walk through it with you. Schedule a consultation.
