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Warehouse retail giant Costco plans to build a new store in northeast Anchorage at a competitor’s former location, according to city filings
The $5.1 million project calls for Costco to renovate the former Sam’s Club in the Tikahtnu Commons shopping center at 1074 N. Muldoon Road, north of Glenn Expressway, according to city records.
Project officials are seeking a municipal permit to renovate the building and create a Costco Business Center, according to Gretchen Stuller, permit management supervisor for Anchorage.
The plans will “reorient and add parking spaces, add landscape islands, building additions and repaint and update building facades,” said Craig Lyon, director of municipal planning, in a staff report on the project in November. “These changes to the general site plan are minor and do not fundamentally alter the function of the shopping mall.”
Costco, based in Washington state, operates four warehouse stores in Alaska and several hundred nationally. Anchorage has two. Juneau and Fairbanks have one.
A Costco Business Center is different from a warehouse store, according to the company’s website
Costco operates more than 15 business centers in the U.S., the site says. They are available to any member, but cater to small businesses. They offer additional items that are not in stock. They open earlier, at 7am instead of 10am, but they are closed on Sundays.
Contractors involved in the project declined to comment. They referred questions to Costco officials, who did not return calls.
The proposed Anchorage store is not listed among Costco’s “coming soon” stores to open within the next four months, according to Costco’s website. A Costco online form for media inquiries remained unanswered as of early Friday, but the site included this statement: “We cannot comment on locations opening more than three months from today.”
The city has issued an interior demolition permit for the project, Stuller said. The permit allows work to begin on site, she said.
On Thursday afternoon, the building was closed and seemed empty of any activity.
The lot is about 650,000 square feet, similar in size to the Costco off Debarr Road, and smaller than the Costco off Dimond Boulevard.
Three Sam’s Club locations in Alaska closed in 2018 after parent company Walmart Inc. announced that it was closing about 60 warehouses across the US
Walmart’s decision was based on the company’s need to better align Sam’s Club’s business strategy with its locations, according to reports at the time. In Alaska, the higher cost of doing business in a distant state was also cited as a factor.
[Earlier coverage: In Fairbanks and rural Alaska, Sam’s Club closing is a ‘major blow’]
The Tikahtnu Commons Center, including the building that housed Sam’s Club, is owned by North Anchorage Real Estate Investors.
The company consists of Browman Development Company in California and CIRI, the regional Alaska Native corporation in much of South Alaska.
The building’s owners had no comment as of Friday morning.
Francis McLaughlin, senior planner with the township, said Costco plans to enter into a lease agreement with the owners for the property.
After Sam’s Club closed its stores in Alaska, the vacant building earlier in the pandemic served as an emergency food distribution site run by the Food Bank of Alaska, following a donation from Walmart for use of the building.
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