Half Price Books returns to Montrose with 2027 opening planned

Half Price Books has bought the former Soundwaves property at 3509 Montrose Blvd. and plans to open a new Montrose store in 2027, restoring the chain’s presence in one of Houston’s most distinctive Inner Loop neighborhoods.

The move brings the bookseller back to a stretch of Montrose that has long been tied to walkability, arts, nightlife and independent retail. Company president Kathy Doyle Thomas said Half Price Books had been trying to return to Montrose for years and was “thrilled” to have the chance to buy the building.

Half Price Books’ original Montrose store at 1011 Westheimer Rd. opened in 2002 and closed on Jan. 17, 2021. When that store shut down, it was the chain’s last remaining Inner Loop location. The company had already lost its Rice Village store at 2537 University Blvd., which closed on March 8, 2020 after rising rents. Together, those closures left inner Houston without a Half Price Books location for more than five years.

The new store will take over a site that had its own loyal following. Soundwaves announced in late April 2026 that it was closing its last remaining Montrose store, ending a run that began in the neighborhood in 1997. Soundwaves first opened in Houston near the Astrodome in 1976 and later expanded to multiple locations, making the Montrose shop a familiar stop for music, surf and skate customers for decades.

That overlap matters in Montrose, where closures are felt not just as retail changes but as shifts in neighborhood identity. The district has been recognized for decades as one of Houston’s major cultural areas and a center of the city’s LGBTQ+ community since the 1970s. In that context, the return of a used-book store is more than a lease deal. It restores a familiar kind of storefront to a corridor where longtime residents have watched independent businesses shape the character of Westheimer and Montrose Boulevard.

For readers who remember the old store, the new location also marks a full-circle moment. Half Price Books left Montrose in 2021, then spent years without an Inner Loop outpost. Its return in 2027 gives the company back a foothold in one of Houston’s most visible neighborhoods, and gives Montrose another retail anchor in a block that has already seen one local institution give way to another.