"But this is real," Commissioner Adam Wright wrote on Facebook in late September. He said Costco and a developer "are moving forward with the intent of bringing a store to Wake Forest." In a separate post, Commissioner Daniel Hupp called the news "an important step" and added a caveat: "this is a proposal, not a done deal."
Both statements are accurate, and the gap between them is mostly about infrastructure. Since 2024, public reporting has tied the Wake Forest Costco to a wooded parcel next to Lowe's. Richland Creek separates that parcel from the roads around it. A store there would need a road and a bridge, and in April the Town put a price on both. Nobody has said yet who will pay.
What the commissioners confirmed, and what they left out
Wake Weekly reported on Sept. 25, 2026 that Wright and Hupp had each shared the news, which the paper said confirmed a project residents had speculated about for years. Wright said the developer gave him permission to go public. He also said a neighborhood meeting was set for the following week, mainly for nearby residents and property owners who received a formal notice. He added that commissioners planned to meet with Costco and the developer in the coming weeks to "discuss what we can do to help keep it moving in the right direction."
Hupp asked residents to send in their views on "traffic, infrastructure, growth, economic impact, and the surrounding neighborhoods."
The September report did not name the developer, give an address, or include a store size or any mention of a gas station. The Town's August 2026 development report lists 38 plans under review, and none of them is labeled Costco. That report came out before the announcement, though, so a missing entry there tells us nothing about what has been filed since.
For now, the nearest Costco is still the one on Wake Forest Road in Raleigh. Wake Forest's only membership warehouse is Sam's Club.
Two years of "almost"
The September news is the second public round for this idea. Earlier reporting suggests where the current proposal may be headed, but no one has confirmed that link.
- September 2024. ABC11, citing the Triangle Business Journal, reported that Costco was looking at land near the U.S. 1 and Highway 98 interchange, next to the Lowe's.
- Sept. 12, 2024. Jacob Anderson, owner of Alliance Group NC (AGNC), said the development team met with nearby residents and got what seemed to be a "positive response."
- October 2024. This was when Anderson said AGNC and Costco planned to submit formal development plans to the Town.
- December 2025. Wake Forest Matters wrote that the "Grovedale" project, a large commercial plan on Ligon Mill Road that matched a Costco's specifications, was in a quiet period with "no active applications to review."
- September 2026. Two sitting commissioners said the project is real and is going back through review.
None of the reporting so far says whether the 2026 proposal uses the same site as Grovedale or whether AGNC is still the developer. The site question matters because the Lowe's-adjacent parcel comes with a specific problem.
The parcel next to Lowe's has a creek on its edge
Wake Forest Matters gave the Grovedale site as 400 Lowes Ave and called it "effectively landlocked." Its analysis of satellite images and Town maps found that Richland Creek runs along the western edge of the property, between the site and the existing Lowe's. A warehouse store draws freight trucks and a steady stream of shoppers, so a single driveway would not be enough. The site would need a road built for that traffic.
The Town already has that road in its plans. On the draft Capital Improvement Plan map, it appears as Project GTP-4, which would extend Ligon Mill Road north, cross Richland Creek, and connect to the Hwy 98 Bypass. In December 2025, that draft plan did not fund GTP-4 until 2028. We could not confirm whether the budget adopted in June changed that year.
The same article pointed to other costs that come with a creekside site. Stream buffers limit how close pavement can get to the water, which leaves less buildable land. The parcel is also wooded and uneven, while the Lowe's lot next door is flat and paved, so heavy grading would be needed to create a level pad of more than 150,000 square feet. These points are the outlet's own reading of public maps, not findings by Town staff.
A recent Costco proposal elsewhere in the region shows the usual scale. The Clayton plan reported in July 2026 calls for a 166,000-square-foot store and a 24-pump fuel station on an 87-acre site at 12649 Clayton Boulevard. Fitting a building that size onto a site limited by a creek explains why the access question has followed the Wake Forest proposal since 2024.
The Town put a price on the road in April
At its April 7, 2026 work session, the Board of Commissioners received its most detailed look yet at the Ligon Mill corridor. Engineering Director Timothy Watson presented a route of about 1.5 miles of new four-lane divided road, running from Grove 98 through Durham Road to Stadium Drive. Wake Forest Matters reported the cost estimates by segment:
| Segment | Route | Estimated cost |
|---|---|---|
| A | North from Grove 98, including the Richland Creek floodway bridge | Just under $22 million |
| B | Through a large undeveloped tract | $32 million |
| C | Connecting to Stadium Drive | $41.2 million |
| Total | About 1.5 miles, four lanes | $95 million |
The estimates cover survey, engineering, permitting, right-of-way, construction, and inspection. Watson said that "a big part of that cost is the bridge going across the floodway." Segment A matters most for a store next to Lowe's, and at just under $22 million it is almost three times the "more than $8 million" that Wake Forest Matters guessed for the bridge in December 2025. The two figures don't measure the same thing. The April estimate covers a full road segment, including land and engineering, while the December number was a rough guess at the bridge alone. Even so, the official estimate is much higher.
Timing adds another constraint. Jason Pace of Exult Engineering, the consultant behind the 30% design plans, told the board the Richland Creek bridge would take about a year and a half to build. Building the whole corridor at once would take roughly four years. If a store on this site has to wait for the bridge, the bridge's construction schedule becomes the earliest possible opening date, no matter how fast Costco moves.
Who pays is still an open question
The board unanimously approved the route for future transportation plan updates and told staff to start the next phase of design. Wake Forest Matters reported that "there was no discussion of how to fund the project."
Watson described two possible sources of money. The Town has talked with developers along the corridor and expects them to share costs through the development process. NCDOT might also take over segments once the road links NC 98, Durham Road, and Stadium Drive. Neither one is a signed agreement.
Commissioner Nick Sliwinski confirmed that the $95 million is in today's dollars. "Obviously the further we push this down the road — no pun intended — the more expensive this will become," he said. Pace made a similar point about land: "Right-of-way and easements always go up."
The Town has taken one concrete step since then. On June 16, 2026, the same night the FY 2026-27 budget was adopted, the board approved buying part of a property owned by the Finch Family Irrevocable Trust for the future Ligon Mill corridor. Buying right-of-way doesn't pay for a bridge, but it does show the corridor moving from a line on a map toward actual land.
This connects back to Wright's September post. Commissioners have said they will meet with Costco and the developer about keeping the project "moving in the right direction." For a store that depends on this site, much of that discussion would likely be about how to share the road's cost among the Town, the developer, and possibly the state.
What to watch between now and spring
Local reporting has tracked this project in public steps. These are the next ones that would show real progress:
- Reports from the neighborhood meeting. Wright said it would be held the week after Sept. 25, mainly for neighbors who received notice. An account of what the developer presented would be the first public detail about the 2026 plan.
- A named case on the Town's monthly development report. A plan name and case number would settle the site question. The August edition listed 38 plans under review.
- Any change to the funding year for GTP-4. Wake Forest Matters said in December 2025 that if the board moved bridge funding earlier, it would signal the Town was clearing the way for the project.
- A cost-sharing agreement for Segment A. Watson's comment about developer cost-sharing would become real if the board votes on one.
- Store details. Size, parking, and whether a fuel station is included all affect the traffic questions Hupp raised. The Garner Costco, built within Cambridge Properties' Rand Village development at 7800 Fayetteville Road, was scheduled to open on Nov. 17, 2021, with a Costco gas station. The Wake Forest proposal hasn't shared those details yet.
Until one of these happens, the most specific information available about a future Wake Forest Costco is the $22 million price of the road segment and bridge that would lead to the site most closely linked to it.
At Irene Higginson, we follow Wake Forest's planning reports and board meetings because projects like the Ligon Mill corridor affect how people get around the north end of town. If you'd like to talk through how a road plan like this one affects a street you care about, Let's Connect.
