The North Spokane Costco has submitted plans to close it's store at 7619 N. Division and build a new bigger store a couple of miles to the north. The plan currently is to build a 160,000 square foot warehouse club store at 11700 N. Newport Hwy. . The site is directly on US 2 in a growing area a little bit north of the Nevada Ave. intersection. The store will sit on a 15 acre site currently vacant and owned by Kaiser Aluminum as part of their former Mead works campus.
The new store will be almost 30,000 square feet larger then the current N. Division store. In addition the new plans for the new Costco on Newport Hwy. show a 7,500 square foot Costco branded gas station, significant larger then the one at the current store.
While the new Costco will likely attract more shoppers, and maybe create some new jobs, it is not without controversy. This is because the new store location will move the store, and it's tax dollars , from within the Spokane city limits into Spokane County. This is the second time the City of Spokane has lost Costco's tax dollars as the company moved it's store near Downtown to Spokane Valley a few years back.
Costco is based in Issaquah, and now operates near 700 club stores worldwide. The company is known for it's bulk items, low prices and higher then average paid employees.
For more information on Costco, visit their website at-
http://www.costco.com