Costco coming?

WASILLA — National membership warehouse retailer Costco will build a store in the Creekside Town Square with site preparation beginning this fall, a contractor with Creekside developer Meritage Development LLC announced to Wasilla City Council Monday evening.

James Sawhill, president of Anchorage-based Lounsbury & Associates, was hired to help with planning and permitting and told the council he was authorized by Costco on Monday to reveal the company’s intention to build a store in the Mat-Su Valley. Meritage is developing land adjacent to Sportsman’s Warehouse along the Parks Highway.

Sawhill made the announcement to the city council nearly a week after rumors swirled around the Valley that Costco was coming.

Although Sawhill made a formal announcement to the city about Costco’s plans, Three Bears Alaska President David Weisz was skeptical when he first heard the news late Monday evening.

Costco is the main supplier for Three Bears, which operates a 51,000-square-foot warehouse store at Trunk Road and the Palmer-Wasilla Highway and a smaller store at Pittman Road in Meadow Lakes. Three Bears is Costco’s largest customer, Weisz said. Part of that business relationship includes a gentlemen’s agreement that he would be informed if Costco were planning to open a competing operation.

“We haven’t heard a word about that,” he said, adding he is confident “they would’ve given us a call.”

Weisz also said he called a Costco warehouse manager in Anchorage Monday evening, who informed Weisz he also had not heard about a deal to build in Wasilla.

“The developer [Meritage] could be talking to the real estate guys [for Costco], but they’re out and about talking to all kinds of people everywhere looking for different areas,” Weisz said. “There’s no deal in place that the warehouse manager or anyone else knows of, and those warehouse managers know two years in advance.”

That said, Weisz also promised he would be contacting Costco’s corporate office first thing this morning. An attempt to contact Costco’s corporate office following Monday’s council meeting to confirm the deal was not successful.

Weisz isn’t the only one skeptical about Costco’s future in the Valley. Councilman Steve Menard said he wonders why Costco didn’t make the announcement itself.

“I’m very skeptical of this right now,” he said. “No one from Costco was there. You want to tell me a multi-billion-dollar corporation is going to [a development] that has red flags flying all around? The first thing you’re going to do [if you’re Costco] is go to the city council and the neighborhoods around them. We had none of that.”

Sawhill said construction is scheduled to begin this fall with heavy machinery preparing the land where the store will sit. Construction on the building will begin next spring with the store’s completion and opening scheduled for fall 2009.

Showing off plans of the Creekside development Monday, Sawhill pointed to a large building labeled “wholesale” surrounded by parking spaces.

The Costco store will become like a centerpiece in the Creekside development, Sawhill said.

“They’ll be very popular,” he predicted of how locals would receive the retail giant.

Costco and Meritage had not previously released details about a potential Valley store, with Meritage declining to comment and Costco saying the company does not comment on specific markets.

Even Greater Wasilla Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Cheryl Metiva was out of the loop about Costco, hearing about it first at the council meeting.

“I was really surprised,” she said.

Metiva said often when a business plans to come to Wasilla, no matter how big or small, it joins the chamber. Until Monday, Metiva and the chamber had heard nothing but the same rumors the rest of the Valley heard last week, she said.