MURRAY — The lease has been signed, the building designed and the landscaping planned. Now the future opening of a new Costco store will depend almost entirely on Mother Nature.
Ideally, Costco would like to begin work on the land in March of next year, which would allow for a early fall opening, said John Gurr, a real estate broker for Costco. To meet that aggressive schedule, however, would require a mild winter — something both the company and Murray City officials hope for.
"It's still a moving target," Gurr said. "Costco's philosophy is that once they have the property, they want to get the store open."
The store has planned to relocate from their current Midvale location to Murray since before the smokestacks toppled last year, and city officials have cited the Costco opening as a reason for optimism about future city revenues. Until this summer, however, the store had not signed a lease with Intermountain Health Care for the property and no formal design proposals had been made to the city.
Along with the dragging negotiations, another significant question mark hung over the store's opening: the cleanup of the former smelter site. That was finished in September.
During a presentation to the City Council this week, David Rogers, Costco development manager, gave city leaders a jolt when they said they doubted the store could open before the summer of 2003. City Councilman John Christensen, who has been critical of the $2.5 million the city has given to IHC for their medical campus, questioned why the project was not being pushed forward to help the city recoup some of its expenditures.
"IHC is slow-walking," Christensen said. "It would be nice if we could get them to speed things up, for the benefit of the city."
Roger's estimated opening conflicted directly with a Costco news release from Monday that said construction would start in March 2002 and the store would open in early fall. Gurr, who was quoted in the news release, said that the confusion came because Rogers is in charge of the construction and was providing a worst-case scenario based on continued heavy snowfall this winter. The news release, on the other hand, was offering the best-case scenario.
IHC Spokesman Jess Gomez said the project was moving very quickly and that the hospital chain planned to break ground on the construction of their medical campus next fall.
"To my knowledge, this project has moved expeditiously," he said. "Our plans are fairly aggressive for the development of this sight."
Mayor Dan Snarr, who personally attends many of the weekly construction meetings at the smelter site, said he expects the store to open before Christmas 2002 and possibly as early as next summer.
"There's no real delay," he said, "unless the weather causes it."
E-MAIL: jloftin@desnews.com