Hobby Lobby is bringing a 55,000-square-foot crafts store next to Academy Sports at a long-building shopping center in Cooperas Cove, Texas, cutting a long drive for local shoppers.
The Cooperas Cove Planning & Zoning Commission approved the commercial project earlier in September on land next to Bealls at the Shops at Five Hills. City development services director Bobby Lewis identified the incoming retailers as Hobby Lobby and Academy Sports in a statement to local outlet KDH News, The Sun reported.
No official opening date has been set. Hobby Lobby corporate has not finalized or released one while the project remains in development.
Cooperas Cove sits about 70 miles north of downtown Austin. For years, residents have had limited options nearby.
The closest Hobby Lobby today sits roughly 12 miles east of town. The nearest location to the west means a 92-mile trip. A full-size store in the Shops at Five Hills changes that math overnight.
A preliminary site plan shows each property with 225 parking spaces and a shared 1.08-acre detention pond. The crafts retailer and the sporting-goods chain will sit side by side on the same pad.
The shopping center itself has been in the works for almost two decades. It already holds Bealls, Bill French Jewelers, Hibbett Sporting Goods, Ashley Outlet, and Ross Dress for Less. H-E-B and Gold’s Gym sit across the street.
Hobby Lobby has mixed some closures with new stores this year and rolled out a checkout change shoppers had requested. On September 11 it opened a 45,000-square-foot location at the Airport Shopping Center in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, its 31st store in that state, on the site of a former Christmas Tree Shops after that chain’s 2023 bankruptcy.
The company was also chosen to anchor a new multi-use development in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, at Foss Fields, joining Sierra, Ross Dress for Less, Five Below, and Petco in the retail section. That will be its second store there.
Separately, Hobby Lobby and Aldi face a new $15 minimum rule that takes effect October 1 and reaches millions of workers. The Texas project itself carries no announced employment figures yet.
For a town that has waited nearly twenty years on this retail corner, two national anchors on approved land are concrete progress. Private investment still fills empty pads faster than speeches do.