Houston real estate firm MetroNational, developer of Memorial City, has named the grandson of the firm’s founder its new chief executive. 

Jason Johnson takes over a business, founded in 1954 by Joseph Johnson, that has grown to manage more than 10 million square feet of commercial real estate in Houston during the past 69 years. Headquartered in Houston, MetroNational has 215 employees. Its largest development is the 300-acre, mixed-used development Memorial City in west Houston.

Johnson joined the family business in 2013 and has served as the company’s president and vice chairman since 2015. He will remain president, even as he assumes the CEO role from his father, Roy Johnson, who will serve as executive chairman.

Jason Johnson takes over as MetroNational is revamping its hallmark Houston retail development, Memorial City Mall, with a 27-acre mixed-use town center, Memorial Town Square. It will bring dozens of restaurants, boutiques, national retailers, apartments and offices to an open-air town center dotted with oak trees and green spaces that will host events and community gatherings. The idea is to create a civic center-like experience that would serve as another gathering space for the growing Memorial Villages area.

Opening in 1966 — four years before the Galleria — construction of the original Memorial City Mall 13 miles west of downtown Houston helped kick off a wave of real estate development in the area as houses, hotels, hospitals, shops and offices were built, creating a “city within a city.” Memorial City has grown to 300 acres from 200 in the 1960s, according to the MetroNational’s website.

Memorial City also includes Class A office spaces; the Westin Memorial City and Hotel ZaZa Memorial City hotels; high rise and mid-rise apartments including the McKinley; what it calls the second-largest medical campus in the Houston area; event spaces the Square and the Lawn; and restaurants, including the future location for Dallas-based Southern food eatery Haywire.

MetroNational also is expected to complete a nine-story office building in Memorial City in the second quarter of 2023. Energy firm Callon Petroleum Company is planning to move into a 107,171 square-foot office in the building in the second half of 2024. BW Energy also signed a lease for 68,000 square feet within the building.