Judging by the reaction to the news, you’d think we lived in a retail wasteland where the only choices for groceries were the corner convenience store or the Farmer Maggot Farmer’s Market and Hay Rake Emporium.
Many wondered if both Costco and Sam’s Club could coexist in town. Clearly Costco thinks Bentonville needs some competition, and while Sam’s may lose some members to Costco, I hardly think Sam’s will fade into the background. After all, Sam’s Club has coexisted with Idaho’s home-grown non-membership-required behemoth, Winco, for a long time in town. Add one more to the mix and maybe the other stores will be a little less crowded. But probably not to the point the average consumer will notice.
Because we don’t one-stop shop anymore. Sam’s is good for certain things. Winco is good for others. There is some overlap, but there’s not enough equality or duplication between the two to make one much more attractive than the other. I suspect the same will be the same when Costco comes – though our access to discount funeral caskets will take a great leap forward.
Caskets brings me to Costco’s surprising choice of location – kitty corner to the Lincoln Cemetery. Costco will build on farmland on the northwest corner of Hitt and Lincoln roads, adjacent to the new roundabout.
At, the roundabout. It’s been one of those you love it or you hate it deals since it got put in by Bonneville county oh, six or seven years ago. When the county widened Lincoln from Hitt to Ammon Road last year, they also increased the number of lanes in the roundabout. I’ve been through it in busy times, and to tell the truth it’s not all that bad. Traffic flows much more regularly than it does at stoplights.
But you have the ninnies who don’t know how to use a roundabout, or try to treat it as a four-way stop, which it is not. Recently, I saw someone in the right turn only lane panicked about what to do – even though they had their own lane to go through the roundabout in.
People will complain about the roundabout and the traffic, and worry that Costco building there will add to the problem. But the solution isn’t a stoplight or convincing Costco to build somewhere else. The solution is getting people to learn how to use the roundabout correctly. Or, if they can’t do so, changing their routes so they don’t have to go through that troublesome bit of asphalt.
I was momentarily puzzled by Costco’s choice of location until something hit me: They won’t be called on by the city to make road improvements in the area, as the roads are already improved. There are some whinging about Costco getting some tax benefits from the city’s economic development program. But the same people wouldn’t complain at all if Costco opted to build in another location and was forced to widen roads and put in stoplights, which has happened in other locations. Building where the roads are already improved is a shrewd move on Costco’s part. And the location, while a bit north of the center of population, is still very central to the city.
Because I’m a map nerd, I got to wondering what Costco will look like in the neighborhood. I wondered about layout, and whether there was enough room at the location they’d picked (I’m sure they did their homework, but still the questions lingered in my head). So using Google Maps, I looked at the Costco location in Pocatello, which also clocks in at about 150,000 square feet, the same size as the store proposed for Idaho Falls.
Making sure the maps were the same scale, I took screenshots of the Pocatello location and also the land in Idaho Falls where the store will be built.
Looks like it’s a perfect fit.
The picture isn’t perfect, as it cuts out, on the south, the location of Costco’s gas pumps in Pocatello. (Also note, the Pocatello location is oriented east-west on its long axis; here it’s been flipped 90 degrees.)
If the adjacent satellite retail locations at Pocatello are included, the lot looks like this:
So the lot in Idaho Falls isn’t quite as big as the one in Pocatello, but is nearly the same size.
What’ll also be interesting is to see what happens to adjacent property. The open land to the east of Costco is pretty big, with the original Lincoln townsite to the east and a few homes and gravel pits to the northeast. I’ll wager that land starts to fill, or at least its asking price goes up, fairly quickly.
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