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Pleasanton’s first-ever Costco is scheduled to officially open its doors in three weeks after a decade of planning, lawsuits and recent construction delays.
According to the Costco website, the warehouse store with a gas station will begin welcoming customers on Nov. 27 — the day before Thanksgiving, arguably one of the busiest days for retail in general.
“The Pleasanton Chamber of Commerce is pleased that the long-awaited opening of the new Costco is nearly here,” James Cooper, president and CEO of the chamber, told the Weekly on Monday.
The chamber will be hosting a ribbon-cutting ceremony on opening day at 7:30 a.m. at the store located just off Interstate 680 between Stoneridge Drive and the I-580 interchange. It will become the third Costco in the Tri-Valley, joining the stores in Livermore and Danville.
Cooper said the new Costco location in Pleasanton will be an asset for the city in many ways, one of which being financially. “Costco’s presence in Pleasanton will provide an instant boost to the sales tax revenue the city receives each year,” he added.
Cooper said that boost will be particularly important considering all of the recent discussions the City Council has had about the city’s projected budget deficit, which city officials have previously partially blamed on low sales tax revenue over the past few years.
“Costco will increase the sales tax revenue, regardless of the tax level,” Cooper said.
Pleasanton city finance director Susan Hsieh told the Weekly on Tuesday, “The opening of Pleasanton’s Costco marks a new source of sales tax revenue, coming at a critical time as the City works to address a structural deficit.”
Cooper also said local small businesses in Pleasanton and the surrounding area will benefit from the warehouse because Costco’s business memberships allow those business owners to shop during special hours, which makes purchasing essential items quicker.
“Many of our smallest for-profit and nonprofit businesses use Costco as a ‘wholesale’ vendor from which they buy items in bulk for their business,” he said. “There are even vendor opportunities a small business may take advantage of to grow their business.”
The new Costco store — located at 7200 Johnson Drive — is one piece of the larger Johnson Drive Economic Development Zone initiative. The project aimed to redevelop approximately 40 acres of land fronting Johnson Drive — near Stoneridge Drive and I-680 — into a commercial corridor including the wholesale retail giant and two new hotels, which both opened in late 2023 and at the beginning of 2024, respectively.
The new warehouse store is set to be approximately 160,000 square feet and will come with 768 parking stalls and 15 double-sided fuel pumps at its Costco gas station.
The Weekly has reached out to Costco for comments about other details and about the opening but had not heard back as of time of publication.
The JDEDZ project also included mandated street improvements such as making the Stoneridge Drive and I-680 northbound on-ramp wider in order to create a second lane, making Johnson Drive wider to create a second northbound lane and traffic signalization improvements on Owens and Commerce drives.
“We’re excited to bring a business that the community has long supported and anticipated,” Pleasanton City Manager Gerry Beaudin said in a statement to the Weekly. “The new Costco will not only boost our sales tax revenue, but it has also provided necessary roadway improvements in the area. These upgrades are especially valuable with the increased traffic expected from Costco’s opening.”
The City Council voted to move forward with allowing the construction of the property, which estimated a total cost of about $33.5 million — an increase from the initial $21.47 million in 2017 — in July 2022.
The project recently saw some minor roadwork and PG&E-related setbacks, which is why the opening day shifted from August to October, to now the end of November. However, the real hurdles happened earlier on in the overall JDEDZ project timeline.
Those issues included a 2016 voter initiative to prohibit large-scale retail stores within the JDEDZ that ultimately lost at the polls as well as the Pleasanton Citizens for Responsible Growth lawsuits and appeal that took place a few years back over whether air quality and traffic impacts were appropriately analyzed as required by the California Environmental Quality Act.
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