Will Costco open Hilo side soon (Kailua: live, stores, beach)

[Xinxinfeimei]

Hi, will Costco open in Hilo side soon ? Thanks

[whtviper1]

April 2018

[Xinxinfeimei]

Originally Posted by whtviper1

April 2018

but I heart someone say that it's April 1st joke , isn't it ?

[Arktikos]

No plans to open a store on Hilo side.

[whtviper1]

Maybe. The article online is from April 1.

[hotzcatz]

Yeah it's one of Damon Tucker's articles and the last sentence is: "The grand opening date is scheduled for April 1st, 2018 according to developer Lirpa Sloof." "Lirpa Sloof", of course being "April Fools" backwards.

Costco has no reason to open on the Hilo side. Folks in Hilo are willing to drive to Kona once a month or so anyway so there's not enough additional revenue for them to open another store. I'd heard they had the Kona store partly as a warehouse for the Oahu stores, but I don't know if that's true or not. Seems a warehouse here would be less expensive than anywhere on Oahu but then things would have to be shipped inter-island so I dunno.

There's a Cost-U-Less in Hilo which is sorta like a small under developed Costco.

[Xinxinfeimei]

Originally Posted by hotzcatz

Yeah it's one of Damon Tucker's articles and the last sentence is: "The grand opening date is scheduled for April 1st, 2018 according to developer Lirpa Sloof." "Lirpa Sloof", of course being "April Fools" backwards.

Costco has no reason to open on the Hilo side. Folks in Hilo are willing to drive to Kona once a month or so anyway so there's not enough additional revenue for them to open another store. I'd heard they had the Kona store partly as a warehouse for the Oahu stores, but I don't know if that's true or not. Seems a warehouse here would be less expensive than anywhere on Oahu but then things would have to be shipped inter-island so I dunno.

There's a Cost-U-Less in Hilo which is sorta like a small under developed Costco.

Thank you

[hotzcatz]

It's kinda humbug there's only one Costco, but since there's only one that pretty much means you see people you know from your side of the island when you visit Kailua-Kona since everyone almost always goes to Costco when they go to Kona.

I'm not sure what demographics are required for Costco to open a new store but I'm sure when they chose Kailua-Kona they took into consideration the population of both sides, their economic status, the accessibility of the port, etc. They're probably also using mainland numbers such as how far mainland folks will drive to get to Costco. Somehow I suspect mainland folks more likely to go 100 miles to get somewhere than most island folks are. But, they didn't ask you and they didn't ask me so we get to drive if we want to go to Costco.

Usually what happens for us, is that several folks will get together and make an outing of going to Costco. We rarely will go there by ourselves but will frequently tag along with other folks when they're going for whatever reason. My neighbor's dog just had puppies and she's going later this week to get dog food. So I'll go along and help her shift big bags of dog food, have lunch, hit the beach and have a nice visit with my neighbor on the drive over as well. But if Costco weren't over there, we'd not be headed in that direction.

[mikereilly]

The funny thing is that the East side of the Island has a larger population than the West side. Half the population lives in either South Hilo district or Puna district as of the 2010 census: http://www.hiloagent.com/images/Hawa...20District.pdf

I suspect there's a population to support two Costco stores on the Island, but acquiring land may be a problem.

[67Cam]

Originally Posted by mikereilly

The funny thing is that the East side of the Island has a larger population than the West side. Half the population lives in either South Hilo district or Puna district as of the 2010 census: http://www.hiloagent.com/images/Hawa...20District.pdf

I suspect there's a population to support two Costco stores on the Island, but acquiring land may be a problem.

Keeping in mind I don't live on the Big Island and was only there for 2 weeks my experiences might not mean much, but we went into Safeway, Target, Walmart and 2 different KTA's. Every time, in each store, it was very busy with long lines. I remember thinking "they really do need a Costco here" (I had read about Costco-free Hilo on the forum beforehand). I imagine population isn't the main roadblock either...