Costco heads west; how will the east end possibly survive?

One Saturday morning a few Decembers ago, I pulled up to the vast space that is the Costco parking lot in St. John's and saw something remarkable: it was practically empty.

I had assumed the store would open at 9 a.m., and learned that morning that they do not. So, I went for a coffee, came back, and waited in my car … and then noticed.

In minutes, the parking lot began to populate itself, as cars and trucks filled in the lot like a bucket of paint on canvas. I actually thought of another analogy at the time.

"You know that Harry Potter scene when the Death Eaters all appear from everywhere at once?" I tweeted. "Kinda like the Costco parking lot at 9:30."

It's a Costco thing, whatever it is

Nothing sparks a townie debate like Costco. Parking congestion on Torbay Road? Costco. The plight of small businesses? Costco. How do people fill oversize shopping carts with so much stuff? Definitely Costco.

I even once got brought into a heated discussion about Canada Goose jackets (honestly, I don't care what people wear when they shop), which seem for some people to be a symbol of overshopping decadence because they can apparently be seen frequently and in clusters near Costco cash registers. 

Anyway, when I saw that parking lot fill up, I thought, "Where do all of these people come from?" Obviously some come from nearby, but it's always struck me that quite a few of the people drawn to Costco feel that magnetic pull from quite a long distance, sometimes more than 100 kilometres away. 

So, when Costco confirmed on Thursday that it is indeed pulling up stakes from the Stavanger Drive big-box neighbourhood, there was a bit of a townie tizzy.

How to crack a neighbourhood open

Costco is heading out to Galway, the large-scale development that former premier Danny Williams is heading up in the western-most part of St. John's. Right now, there's not a whole lot to see at Galway, so signing up an anchor tenant of that magnitude is an important marketing stroke for Williams.

As Price Club — as it was known when it opened almost 22 years ago — proved at Stavanger Drive, Costco can crack a neighbourhood. Over the last two decades, the whole Stavanger area has been filling in, with other retailers large and small, restaurants and even a hotel. There's still construction going on there.

Not surprisingly, Costco's move west was easily our most-read story on Thursday. It's the proverbial talk of the town, but the important point is that Costco's audience is way past town.

And it turns out that it wasn't just Danny Williams's sales pitch that wooed Costco. It was something much more practical. According to what is emerging from employees, Costco is looking for an extra 22,000 square feet of space above what it already has.

Will the rest of Stavanger feel a pinch?

It makes a lot of sense to me for Costco to have a location that is closer to consumers who have to hit the highway to drive into town, not to mention people who live in Mount Pearl, Conception Bay South and other neighbouring towns. 

Which raises the question: will the loss of those shoppers, plus such a huge Stavanger anchor, take the wind out of the east end?

What do customers think about Costco's plan to move to Galway?

8 years ago

Duration 1:13

We took to the parking lot to ask what people thought about the store's announcement to move from Stavanger Drive in the east end to the new Galway development in the city's west end.

I don't think so. The Stavanger area (including the offshoot Hebron Way development on the other side of Torbay Road) includes several superstores: a Walmart, a Dominion, a Kent, a Best Buy and a Canadian Tire large enough to get lost in.

Being a curious person, I tapped out an informal poll on the CBC Newfoundland and Labrador Twitter account. The leading answer in this admittedly quite unscientific survey showed that people are more than willing to shop at the new location when it opens, perhaps as early as November. 

As an east ender myself, I think "town" will be just fine.

I'm wondering, though, what it will feel like to have a deserted Costco building next to another vacant behemoth, namely the old Target store that died where a Zeller's store before it had failed.

I'm also curious about what will happen to what's been called the "Costco effect" on east end gas stations, many of which tap away at their prices after every Thursday's setting to keep up with the significantly cheaper gas that Costco sells. 

Moreover, those questions I mentioned earlier — like the impact on small businesses — still deserve to be discussed. A whole lot of cash exits this province every day, courtesy of those supersized shopping carts.

Sprawling right along

There's also another story that emerged this week, but sparked much less debate.

Namely, for the first time in two generations, the development plan for the Northeast Avalon is being reviewed.

• Municipalities look to renew northeast Avalon regional plan

No one is talking about the A-word — amalgamation — at this point, but if that's not on the table, let's hope for sure that sensible, co-ordinated planning is.

• Read more articles by John Gushue

The rush to big-box developments by competing municipalities is one thing, but more concerning in the long run is the overspread of similar residential suburbs.

We've made the small space that is the Northeast Avalon a paragon of sprawl, and have been woefully lax in pursuing different kinds of housing options that are both appealing to various income levels (especially low and limited) and that encourage walking, and public transport instead of a dependence on cars to get around … to places like big box developments.