Metro Vancouver's first Costco Business Centre set for New Westminster | Daily Hive

Metro Vancouver's first Costco Business Centre planned for New Westminster

A Costco Business Centre in Minnesota. (melissamn/Shutterstock)

Costco Wholesale has major plans to add at least two more store locations in Metro Vancouver, but what sets one of these future locations apart is that it will feature a store concept unique to the region.

The region’s first Costco Business Centre is planned for New Westminster, catering specifically to business customers with bulk and specialized products, in contrast to the far more common Costco warehouses primarily tailored for everyday shoppers.

Through a Freedom of Information (FOI) request filed by Daily Hive Urbanized, it is now known that the City of New Westminster issued a development permit on February 7, 2025, for the new store at 1085 Tanaka Court in the Queensborough district.

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The site of the future Costco Business Centre spans about 13 acres, situated immediately east of Value Village and Starlight Casino, and just southwest of Queensborough Landing Outlet Mall, where Walmart is an anchor tenant. The general area is also home to other major industrial and commercial uses.

1085 Tanaka Court New Westminster Costco Business Centre

Future location of Costco Business Centre at 1085 Tanaka Court, New Westminster. (MG2/Costco)

Currently, the property features a warehouse store building constructed in 2011, along with a large surface parking lot. Originally built for home improvement retailer Lowe’s, the store opened in 2012 and operated until its closure in 2023. Records show local developer Beedie acquired the property for $74 million in June 2024.

Application files provided by the City to Daily Hive Urbanized through FOI indicate the Costco Business Centre concept will fully retain and repurpose the existing former Lowe’s building, with the removal of the Garden Centre’s roofing and other minor exterior modifications. This Costco location will span a floor area of about 142,400 sq. ft.

The existing parking lot will be reconfigured by increasing the width of the parking stalls from 9 ft. to 10 ft. This will reduce the number of parking stalls from 587 to 522.

Existing condition:

1085 tanaka court new westminster costco business centre 5

Future location of Costco Business Centre at 1085 Tanaka Court, New Westminster. (Colliers International)

Future condition:

Future location of Costco Business Centre at 1085 Tanaka Court, New Westminster. (MG2/Costco)

At this time, there is no indication of when this store could open. However, since the store will repurpose a relatively recently constructed existing building rather than requiring a complex, ground-up construction project, it could open sooner than a newly constructed build. Daily Hive Urbanized has reached out to Costco and Beedie for comment.

The application was designed by architectural firm MG2, which is based in Seattle, where Costco is also globally headquartered. According to MG2’s website, the firm has a longstanding partnership with Costco, having designed over 780 store locations for the retailer over the past 30 years. They state that throughout the partnership’s history, they have consistently adhered to Costco’s strict project timeline of ensuring that construction does not exceed 110 days.

Regular Costco store vs. Costco Business Centre

Any Costco membership grants access to all Costco locations and store formats.

As these locations primarily serve businesses, Costco Business Centre locations see far less consumer traffic. The company states Costco Business Member cardholders account for over 90 per cent of the sales volume achieved at these stores.

Costco Business Centre also has earlier business hours that better fit business schedules, opening at 7 am and closing at 6 pm on weekdays, opening at 9:30 am and closing at 4 pm on Saturdays, and closed on Sundays. Conversely, regular stores open from 10 am to 8:30 pm on weekdays, 9:30 am to 6 pm on Saturdays, and 9:30 am to 6 pm on Sundays.

Additionally, these stores offer next-business day delivery services within a designated delivery zone in a region and to business addresses only.

According to a Costco fact sheet, the Costco Business Centre locations are generally smaller than the regular Costco stores.

Regular Costco stores have a typical building size of about 150,000 sq. ft. on 14 acres of land, along with 6,000 to 8,000 customers per day supported by parking lots with about 750 spaces. In contrast, the Costco Business Centre concept generally has a building floor area of about 115,000 sq. ft. on eight to 10 acres of land, and such stores see approximately 2,000 customers per day, with the parking lot carrying a capacity of about 300 to 400 stalls.

Correspondingly, regular stores generally have about 700 shopping carts and 100 flatbeds, while Costco Business Centre locations have 200 shopping carts and 75 flatbeds.

The planned Costco Business Centre location in New Westminster is larger than the concept’s typical specifications. But this is due to the use of an existing building designed for the specifications of the previous retailer.

Additionally, a larger location may better serve Metro Vancouver’s needs if this is intended to be the region’s sole Costco Business Centre in the long term. This chosen location in Queensborough is also roughly located in the geographic centre of Metro Vancouver’s urban areas.

Example of the goods and services of Costco Business Centre. (Costco)

As Costco Business Centre caters to goods and supplies businesses need, it has a narrower selection of merchandise than the regular stores. For example, it does not sell any clothing, jewelry, toys, sporting goods, housewares, and books.

If the bulk merchandise at regular Costco stores seems large, the products offered at Costco Business Centre are even bigger. This includes restaurants and catering businesses buying very large bulk packages of flour, sugar, coffee, other dry goods, eggs, dairy products, frozen meats, produce, and other food products, as well as cooking utensils, commercial fridges and ranges, serving items, and cleaning supplies.

It also fulfills the goods needs of vending machine and convenience store operators, as well as hotels, motels, and professional offices, such as cleaning supplies, toilet paper, office supplies, televisions, radio clocks, copy paper, office supplies, and office furniture.

Bulk purchases and the lack of freight costs can offer significant savings for businesses, especially in Metro Vancouver, where rising operational expenses have heavily impacted small businesses in particular.

Out of 108 Costco store locations that currently exist in Canada, there are just six Costco Business Centre locations, including one in Edmonton, one in the Toronto area, one in St. Catharines (Niagara Falls), one in Ottawa, and two in the Montreal area. Some of these locations opened over the past few years.

Currently, there are 14 Costco locations across British Columbia, including seven locations within Metro Vancouver.

As previously reported by Daily Hive Urbanized in July 2024, Costco is also proposing to build a new regular store location at 1891 164 Street and 1947 164 Street in South Surrey.

But unlike the New Westminster project, the South Surrey location is far more complex and faces more hurdles as it is a brand new-build store on a vacant site that is heavily trees and bushed, surrounded by residential neighbourhoods, and requires major road improvements reaching to the nearby Highway 99 interchange.

The regular Costco store in South Surrey would occupy approximately 20 acres, featuring a 165,000 sq. ft. building, a surface parking lot with about 1,000 stalls, and a Costco gas station — making it the third Costco location in Metro Vancouver to include a gas station.

The City of Surrey is still in the process of considering the application for the South Surrey store. If approved, the company will expand to 16 locations in Metro Vancouver, including the Costco Business Centre, by adding two more stores.

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