George C. Ford, CR Gazette –
CORALVILLE — Costco Wholesale, the world’s largest wholesale membership club, has set a June 29 opening date for its Coralville location in a former Amana refrigerator distribution center.
The opening date for the 137,500-square-foot warehouse, 5,000-square-foot tire sales and service center, more than 600 indoor parking spaces and gas station with 12 pumps and three islands is listed on a Costco website, http://shop.costco.com/In-The-Warehouse/Locations-Coming-Soon.aspx
The Coralville warehouse club at 2900 Heartland Dr. on a 24.7-acre site will be Costco Wholesale’s second location in Iowa. The Issaquah, Wash.-based company also operates a store in West Des Moines.
The Coralville City Council in December approved plans to extend a sanitary sewer under Interstate 80 to the Costco Wholesale site. The project, estimated at $365,000, will be funded by the property owners who benefit.
The Coralville City Council also approved an ordinance that changed the designation of the land from general industrial to general commercial.
Costco Wholesale, a publicly-traded company, has not indicated how many people will be employed by the Coralville location. The company employs more than 161,000 around the world.
On Dec. 31, 2011, Costco Wholesale operated 598 warehouses in 40 states and Puerto Rico (433 locations), nine Canadian provinces (82 locations), the United Kingdom (22 locations), Korea (seven locations), Taiwan (eight locations, through a 55 percent-owned subsidiary), Japan (11 locations),
Australia (three locations), and 32 warehouses in Mexico through a 50 percent-owned joint venture.
