Costco officials will present their plans to open a store in Waterloo’s west end at a Monday night city council meeting.
It will be the first public comment the company has made about a proposal that first showed up in a marketing brochure in March.
According to the brochure, Costco will be the anchor tenant of a retail development on Erb Street West, just west of Ira Needles Boulevard.
Coun. Karen Scian says the city won’t approve Costco’s proposal without assurances that residents are on board with it.
“Whenever we look at these applications, we need to hear from the public,” she tells CTV.
“This is a big one. It fundamentally changes how life is on the west side.”
Among Scian’s primary concerns about the proposal are what it would do for traffic in the area.
Drivers already experience backups along Ira Needles, and although the road is planned to be widened to four lanes starting in 2015, Costco is believed to what to open its doors earlier than that.
“It’s up to us to ask some really important questions … about the traffic studies, about how the region’s going to look after those traffic needs for the long-term,” says Scian.
A new road is also planned to be built after 2017 through the Waterloo Golf Academy lands west of Ira Needles.
“Costco’s quite a traffic generator, but there are certain things that are happening both regionally and locally to assist with that,” says Rob Trotter, a Waterloo development planner.
According to the marketing brochure, the full retail development would include nearly 150,000 square feet of shopping space and 1,000 parking spaces over more than 20 acres of land.
Trotter says the earliest councillors would be able to vote on Costco’s proposal is this fall, after periods for city review and public comment.
