When Your Neighbor is a Big-Box Store

“Everything about housing development is antithetical to Costco's business model. Costco is in the business of building the same big-box store – with the same gigantic parking lot – pretty much anywhere. Urban infill housing is costly, complicated, and customized. But some people will do anything for an entitlement.”

The end result may be the type of mixed-use development that, while achingly pragmatic, would give even the most sanguine New Urbanist a heart attack. From the renderings, it will not be a human-scale, finely detailed series of storefronts and front doors. It will, rather, be an enormous box hemmed in by slightly smaller boxes And, in a rarity for Costco, much of the parking will be underground.

“Big boxes aren't just stores. They are, by definition, real estate plays. Between the demand for housing, the urbanist antipathy for wasted space, new state laws friendly to mixed-use and adaptive reuse, and other local regulations akin to Los Angeles’s TOC (e.g. the Bay Area’s own TOC program), more such developments seem inevitable -- it would be financially irresponsible of the Costcos, Targets, and Walmarts of the world not to pursue them. The South L.A. Costco is just the prototype.”