Greenside and Memorial City's Ice Rink: What Fall 2026 Brings

On July 10, the bleachers at Ice Skate Memorial City filled up for the annual Guns N' Hoses game, Houston firefighters against police officers, played for a colleague's medical bills and, this year, for something else too. The rink was three weeks from its scheduled shutdown. Charlotte Nall, one of the parents leading the campaign to keep it open, put the stakes plainly to local reporters: if this were soccer, you could just go to the next field. Skaters don't have a next field. Houston has four full-size ice sheets left in the country's fourth-largest city, and Memorial City's was about to become three.

Five days after that game, MetroNational, the company that owns Memorial City Mall, announced it would keep the ice running. Not permanently. Programming, including the hockey league, open skate, freestyle sessions, and Learn to Skate, will continue through December 14, 2026, with any prepaid or unused sessions refunded after that date. The extension bought skaters one more season. It didn't change the ending. After more than 20 years, the rink is still closing this winter.

Redevelopment plans for the Sears wing

The closure coincides with redevelopment plans for the Sears wing. In November 2025, MetroNational filed construction plans with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation under the name "400 Gessner-North Site Phase 2," calling for the demolition of roughly 216,000 square feet in the mall's former Sears wing, along with a relocated entrance and a new ground-floor lobby. Work started this spring. The parking lot portion is expected to wrap by January 2027, with the rest of the project finishing by April 2027.

The redevelopment timeline extends into 2027, while the rink's scheduled closure remains this winter.

Half a mile away, Greenside offers a contrast

Cross Interstate 10 from the mall and you land at 1085 Gessner Road, where three former warehouses are being converted into Greenside, a 35,000-square-foot outdoor development with a central lawn, string lighting, and a children's play structure. The developer is MetroNational, working with Radom Capital and Michael Hsu Office of Architecture, the same design team behind Montrose Collective and Heights Mercantile.

The two projects offer a contrast. One property loses an enclosed, single-purpose amenity built decades ago for one activity. Another gains an open-air space designed to hold a dozen small, unrelated businesses at once.

MetroNational floated a 27-acre "town square" concept for the mall back in 2022, well before either the Sears demolition or Greenside broke ground. And the company didn't stop at these two sites. In 2025, MetroNational bought the 309,144-square-foot retail portion of CityCentre, the outdoor shopping center next to the mall, along with the former Marathon Oil office tower inside it. The mall, Greenside, and CityCentre are three separate properties tied to MetroNational through ownership, development, or acquisition.

What's actually open right now, and what isn't yet

Greenside finished shell construction on its main buildings in June 2026, which means tenants are still mid-buildout as of this fall. Here's where things stand:

• Original ChopShop, the juice and protein bowl chain, was first to open, arriving inside a Greenside office building in July.
• Tifa Chocolate & Gelato, Epic Cycles (relocating from its current CityCentre storefront), and Swish Dental are targeting openings between this fall and the end of the year.
• Merit Coffee, the San Antonio roaster opening its third Houston-area location at Greenside, is aiming for winter 2026.
• Honest Mary's, Leemoo, Hiatus Day Spa, solidcore, and Pizzana, the five tenants first announced back in February, are all working toward the same fourth-quarter window, though none has confirmed an exact date.

None of that means Greenside will feel finished by the time the rink closes. For the next several months these two stories will run on top of each other: the last skaters at the mall gliding past scaffolding on the Sears wing, while across the freeway a lawn that's still filling in gains a coffee counter here, a bike shop there. It's closer to living through a remodel than watching a ribbon-cutting. If you're planning a Saturday around either place this fall, check what's actually open before you drive over, because the calendar for both properties is still moving.

What stays the same while the format changes

The businesses framing both sides of this shift, Torchy's Tacos, Mia's Table, and Kirby Ice House, all sit within walking distance of Greenside and predate the entire project. MetroNational is building its new walkways specifically to connect Greenside to those existing spots rather than compete with them. Whatever else changes about how Memorial City handles indoor versus outdoor space, the neighborhood's casual dinner rotation isn't getting displaced. It's getting a new front porch.

That's worth sitting with if you've lived in Memorial long enough to remember when Sears was still open, or when Town & Country Mall stood where CityCentre is now. The rink closing is one part of a wider set of changes in the district. The Sears wing is slated for demolition, Greenside is taking shape nearby, and MetroNational acquired part of CityCentre in 2025. Together, those projects invite a comparison between the district's indoor spaces and newer outdoor development. Whether these changes represent a lasting shift is still an open question; their timing alone doesn't establish that the rink is closing so Greenside can open.

If you're watching how Memorial City's changes ripple into home values or timing on the west side of the neighborhood, that's a conversation Julie Sheets has with clients regularly. Reach out anytime to schedule a consultation.