FILE: A view of a Costco store on December 12, 2019 in Novato, California.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Following a two-year legal battle, the Fresno City Council voted unanimously Thursday to approve a new Costco that would be the biggest in the state.
The path now appears to be clear for the mega-Costco to finally break ground — or for more lawsuits to be filed — or both.
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The new store was originally slated to eclipse all others before it with plans for more than 240,000 square feet of retail warehouse space. The Salt Lake City Costco currently holds the record at 235,000 square feet.
But those designs were scaled back after feedback from the community. The new Costco is still a massive one and is slated to feature a 219,000-square-foot warehouse which includes a 47,000-square-foot component called a market delivery option which enables large items, like TVs or refrigerators, to be loaded into trucks for nearby home delivery. The footprint also includes a car wash, charging stations and a 32-pump gas station along with a parking area.
A view of the empty lot the new store will take over in Fresno.
Google Street View
The Fresno City Council initially approved the plan in April 2024, granting Costco the ability to build the new store on a 22.4-acre site in northwest Fresno on the corner of Northwest Herndon Avenue and North Riverside Drive. Construction was originally slated to begin that fall and finish by the end of 2025.
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The giant new Costco was pitched by the company to replace the existing north Fresno Costco on West Shaw which was built in 1985. Costco officials at Thursday’s meeting confirmed that that location was the retail giant’s first location in California.
However, in July 2025, Judge Jonathan Skiles ruled that the project couldn’t go forward until the city came into compliance with climate change and zoning regulations.
As a result of the ruling, in November 2025, the project’s environmental impact report was decertified by the city council and the development plans were put on hold, city staff said at the meeting. Eventually, another environmental impact report was submitted and the plans were slated to move forward pending Thursday’s decision.
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Close up view of Costco Gasoline packed with vehicles in Irvine Calif., Feb. 20, 2022.
Fang Zheng/Getty Images
At Thursday’s meeting, Fresno resident Daniel Brannick, an attorney and a spokesperson for the Herndon-Riverside Coalition for Responsible Planning and Development, the entity that brought forth the 2024 lawsuit, expressed his discomfort at the city’s lack of action in the wake of the ruling.
“We’re here today because we won a trial in court,” he said Thursday during public comment. “And the city had to decertify the EIR and rescind the project approvals that had been presented in 2024 before recirculating to get here. We said there was an opportunity to fix faulty work and we meant that. The city has apparently decided to squander that opportunity. They said they’d fix things. They have not. They’ve led to the same flawed conclusions regarding zoning and CEQA.”
Brannick said the city did nothing to change from the original documentation, “literally moving papers around” and alleged that the building looks to be more like a distribution center than a retail center which is against the city zoning regulations for that parcel. He called the city’s environmental review finding’s “fundamentally incompatible and defy all logic and reason.”
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Brannick vowed to sue again if the council voted approved the project Thursday.
“We don’t oppose Costco,” he concluded, “and we’re not running a popularity contest. What we oppose is not calling things what they are and not following the law. If you approve the project today, we’re going to be back in court.”
The line grows for a chance to meet Guy Fieri inside the San Luis Obispo, Calif. Costco on March 6, 2024.
Andrew Pridgen/SFGATE
Brannick’s group had asked that Councilmember Mike Karbassi recuse himself from this week’s vote due to statements he made in an interview last year as well at last week’s city budget meeting. But Karbassi declined to do so and instead gave vocal support of the project and in his closing comments seemed to address Brannick directly.
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“I just want to state, we are having this meeting today, I don’t see pitchforks. I don’t see my residents here protesting. Where’s the coalition?,” he asked rhetorically. “I see one person.”
SFGATE reporters Amanda Bartlett and Madeline Wells contributed to this story.
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