South Meridian's New Costco Is Only the First Piece of the Lake Hazel Corner

The new Costco at 203 E. Tower Lane covers 200,342 square feet. More than 26,000 of those square feet are closed to shoppers.

This warehouse near Lake Hazel Road and Meridian Road is built to serve customers well beyond its parking lot. The money it brings in is helping pay for the highway out front, and the parcels around it are being redrawn now that it's there. Costco set November 5 at 8 a.m. as its opening date, and the store is the anchor for a commercial corner still taking shape on the Meridian–Kuna line.

The Biggest Room You Can't Walk Into

BoiseDev looked into whether this is one of the largest Costcos in the world. The size comes mostly from a back-of-house space called a Market Delivery Operations area, or MDO. It's a fulfillment operation for delivering large, bulky purchases to customers' homes. It isn't a public business center. KTVB reported that it's the first market delivery operation in the Treasure Valley.

Take that space out and the shopping floor is about 174,306 square feet. Here's how that compares with the Costco north Meridian households already know, near West Chinden Boulevard and North Ten Mile Road, which opened in 2020.

The shopping floor is still bigger than the north store's whole building, by about 22,000 square feet. The MDO means the store's reach goes past the people who drive to it. Couches, appliances and other big items will leave this building headed for homes across the valley.

The Hours and Services Worth Saving

Costco's page for the Meridian warehouse lists hours by membership tier.

• Executive members: 9 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. weekdays, 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday
• Gold Star and Business members: 10 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. weekdays, 9:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday
• Gas station: 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily
• Departments and services: food court, tire service, pharmacy, optical, hearing aids and an AT&T cellular kiosk

If you live south of Amity, this is now the closest place to handle tires, prescriptions and a fill-up in one stop. Those are trips that used to mean driving north. The gas station closes at 7 p.m., so plan an evening fill-up before then.

The Store Is Helping Pay for the Road Out Front

The building is the part you can see. Under Idaho's Sales Tax Anticipation Revenue program, known as STAR, a developer pays up front for road work the state has already decided is needed. The developer can then be repaid from sales tax the project generates. Brighton Corporation, the developer behind the site, signed that kind of agreement with the Idaho Transportation Department. ACHD also signed it.

Every receipt rung up at this Costco and the stores that follow helps repay the cost of widening State Highway 69, the stretch of Meridian Road out front. KTVB reported that Brighton will spend at least $24 million on road improvements under the agreement. ACHD told the station that no STAR money is going to improvements on ACHD-owned property.

The scope approved by the ITD board at its August 2025 meeting has three phases:

1. Intersection improvements on SH-69 at Aristocrat and at Lake Hazel.
2. Widening Meridian Road from south of Lake Hazel to north of Columbia Road.
3. Design-only work for a Rawson Canal culvert extension, more widening, a new signal and an extension north of Quartz Creek Street.

In August, the Idaho Statesman described the work as widening the east side of SH-69 between Lake Hazel and Columbia first, with the west side to follow. When finished, that section would be seven lanes. The paper said in August that the work was expected to wrap up by early October. ITD told KTVB the project covers about a mile of SH-69 and includes a new traffic signal at Aristocrat Drive.

Lake Hazel Road has its own project. In early 2025, a City of Meridian transportation memo said ACHD had approved a cooperative agreement to rebuild and widen Lake Hazel between South Apex Avenue and South Meridian Road. The plan calls for five lanes and a 10-foot concrete multi-use path on each side. Those paths link the corner to people on foot and on bikes as well as to drivers.

Across Meridian Road, the Plan Got Smaller and More Specific

The retail planned across from the store shows how the corner is changing now that the anchor is built. BoiseDev reported in September that plans for the northeast corner of Lake Hazel and Meridian changed. The earlier version showed three "proposed" and three "potential" buildings, the largest at 20,515 square feet. The newer version shows seven buildings totaling 33,755 square feet.

Under the newer plan, a 33,755-square-foot total is spread across seven buildings, so no single space comes close to the old 20,515-square-foot footprint. Three of the buildings are drive-thrus facing Meridian Road:

• A 1,200-square-foot building with three lanes merging into one
• A 3,075-square-foot building with two lanes
• A 3,180-square-foot building with two lanes merging into one

The other four buildings would be 4,800, 6,000, 7,700 and 7,800 square feet. BoiseDev described earlier interest in the site as coming from "multiple national and regional retailers."

The drive-thru lane counts tell you who the plan is built for. A three-lane stacking setup is designed for steady car traffic, the kind that 200,000 square feet of warehouse and a widened state highway are built to bring in.

Next Door, the Momentum Plan Is Being Redrawn

The Costco sits inside Brighton's larger Momentum project, and the land around it is being reworked too. BoiseDev reported in October that Brighton has proposed rezoning 19 acres for higher-density housing. The documents would allow up to 400 multifamily units and 240 single-family homes. The proposal includes garden-style apartments, and townhomes, duplexes or single-family homes are still options on the rest of the residential land.

The same proposal would move 8.2 acres from medium-high-density housing to commercial use. That would leave Momentum at 63.5 acres of retail, 23.5 acres of office and 38 acres of residential. The hearing on these changes was moved to November 5, the same day Costco set for its opening.

Taken together, the plan puts more of the site toward stores and offices, and more homes onto fewer acres. That shift is the clearest sign of how much the Costco anchor counts in Brighton's math. Retail land grows because the store draws traffic, and that store traffic generates the sales tax that repays the road work.

How the Pieces Fit on a Saturday Errand

For anyone living along the Lake Hazel, Amity and Columbia stretch, here's how the corner fits together:

If you're heading north on Meridian Road from Kuna or south Meridian, the trip that used to end at the freeway or at Chinden now has a full stop just past Lake Hazel, with gas, tires, a pharmacy and a food court in one building. The retail across Meridian Road and the rest of Momentum are planned to fill in around that stop.

If you own a home near Lake Hazel and Meridian Road and want to understand how the new Costco, the SH-69 work and the Momentum plans fit into your home's value, Nicole Morgan can walk you through it with local, block-by-block context. Request a Free Home Valuation and see where your home stands as this corner fills in.