PORT ST. LUCIE — Costco now has the land for its long-anticipated, 170,000-square-foot retail store.
The City Council March 9 unanimously approved a $6 million land sale to the retailer for 22.8 acres in Southern Grove, across the street from where Costco Wholesale already is building a distribution depot.
The site is at the southeast corner of Village Parkway and Marshall Parkway.
The deal requires the sale to be finalized within 390 days — which will include periods for inspections and pre-construction approvals — although city leaders said they hope it will be much quicker.
“I would love to see that cut in half,” Councilwoman Stephanie Morgan said.
Costco customers line up before the 8 a.m. April 25, 2025, opening of the new store in Stuart at 3173 S. Kanner Hwy., just south of Martin County High School.
The Port St. Lucie store would be larger than Costco’s 156,438-square-foot Stuart store, which opened in April. Like Stuart and other Costco stores, the Port St. Lucie store also would have a gas station.
Costco officials, according to city staff, have said it usually takes about 130 days to build a store once vertical construction begins.
The process of landing a Costco store was a long one, Mayor Shannon Martin said. She called to mind previous long city projects, at the conclusion of which council members have sung the Etta James classic “At Last.”
“We should be singing ‘At Last’ for this as well,” Martin said. “Here we are, and now we are getting that retail store that we’ve been waiting so long for.”
Costco has a tumultuous history on the Treasure Coast. It took the company roughly 11 years to build the Stuart store, its first on the Treasure Coast.
A map shows, in red, the approximately 23 acres that the Port St. Lucie Government Finance Corp. will consider selling to Costco Wholesale Corp. at a March 9 meeting.
Costco originally wanted a store in Palm City, but after four failed attempts to pass Martin County’s review process, Costco withdrew its application in September 2017.
During that brief window of opportunity, Port St. Lucie pitched itself as an alternative site.
Councilman Anthony Bonna remembered a video produced of Mayor Greg Oravec offering to roll out the red carpet for Costco, including an offer to give Costco land in Southern Grove for free.
Back then, Bonna said, Port St. Lucie needed to offer such incentives in order to have any chance of landing a store because Costco did not see Port St. Lucie as an ideal market that met its target demographics, Bonna said. Now, Costco does not need such incentives to see Port St. Lucie as attractive, Bonna said.
“People now finally recognize what we are,” Bonna said. “We were fighting for Costco, and now they’re coming here and they’re paying for their land.”
Negotiations to land a Costco retail store began just weeks after the city began talking to the company about potentially building the distribution depot here, Martin said. While the depot moved forward, discussions with the company’s retail team continued slowly, eventually resulting in a deal getting done, Martin said.
“I think they realized that they missed a good thing in the beginning,” Martin said.
More: Costco set to build store in Port St. Lucie; city to OK land sale
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The first phase of Costco’s distribution depot, already under construction on nearly 200 acres in Southern Grove, is due to open later this month.
That opening is to coincide with closure of the company’s current depot in West Palm Beach. Costco operates 24 regional distribution depots servicing its more than 800 stores worldwide.
Phase 1 of the depot is to include a 595,000-square-foot cold and dry storage facility. It is expected to employ 265 people.
Phase 2 of the depot, which does not yet have an announced opening date, is to include a 1.06-million-square-foot dry-storage facility, and is expected to bring the overall depot employment to more than 500.
There also is land for expansion.
While the store likely will grab a lot of attention, Vice Mayor Jolien Caraballo said, it is a “bonus” compared to the economic impact the depot will have.
Wicker Perlis is TCPalm’s Watchdog Reporter for St. Lucie County. You can reach him at Wicker.Perlis@TCPalm.com.
This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: Costco Wholesale has land for Port St. Lucie store on Treasure Coast