The Bend City Council discussed the future of a new Bend Costco in Wednesday night’s meeting, and it was revealed that Costco is not afraid to back out of the project if certain requests are not granted.
“The information from Costco that if they are not allowed to get the parking deviations, they won’t move forward with the project,” said Tia Lewis, a representative with Powell Development Co., the company working with Costco.
RELATED: Plan for new Costco in Bend gets OK from planning commission
Costco is asking the council to allow a few exceptions to the city code.
“Costco also asked for 12 deviations from code standards, which is allowed, with the approval of a master plan,” said Colin Stephens, the City of Bend’s community and economic development director.
The “approval” needing to come from the city council, who have been advised not to discuss this with news outlets.
“The council was O.K. with most of [the deviations] but not with two of them. One of them would be to reduce the number of required bicycle parking spaces, and the other one was to increase the maximum number of vehicle parking spaces,” said Stephens.
Councilor Melanie Kebler laid out the reasoning behind the current requirements at the meeting.
“No, I don’t find that persuasive because the purpose of our parking regulation, the maximums is to prevent a sea of asphalt in commercial developments,” said Kebler.
Stephens said the council was in agreement that those two deviations were not approvable.
The next meeting to discuss the store will be November 16. This will not allow public comment and is planned to produce a final decision on the new Costco.
The new Costco, if it goes forward, would replace the current one on Bend’s eastside. It would include a gas station, tire center and car wash.
Below is our report from April of 2020 on the plans to build the new Costco.
