Costco clears construction hurdles with Richland

Costco, the popular warehouse retailer, has met Richland County regulations and has been cleared to move forward with plans to construct a store near Harbison, officials said Tuesday.

The membership-only warehouse club must still gain approval from the state Department of Transportation for traffic improvements in the area, county officials said.

The Richland County Department of Planning and Development had been reviewing revised plans submitted by the company to address landscaping and engineering issues at the company’s chosen construction site at Piney Grove and Fernandina roads.

In April, the DOT finalized a traffic impact study submitted by Costco for the area that detailed improvements for handling the traffic that would be created by the development, according to Carol Hamlin, SCDOT district permit engineer. The company was also required to submit an encroachment permit application that detailed improvements, Hamlin said.

“We’re still going through that design process,” Hamlin said, “but conceptually, we have been approving it along the way. There are a few more design issues that we do need to figure out before we actually approve the permit and approve the accesses (to the Costco development).”

Because Costco must revise plans to address each issue as they arise and re-modify submitted plans to DOT, the agency could not predict when final approval would be given, Hamlin said. “It’s a two-part process. Right now, we’re waiting on a revised set of plans in answer to the initial round of comments we had.”

The proposed store would be Costco’s first in the Midlands.

The company operates 680 warehouses worldwide, including 480 in the United States. Costco has four stores in South Carolina, including Myrtle Beach, Charleston, Greenville and Spartanburg.

Based in Issaquah, Wash., Costco has been courted by Richland County shoppers for a decade and has long been viewed as a missing link in the rising retail ranks of the Midlands.

Costco has not commented on the plans for its first Midlands store.

This story was originally published August 25, 2015 at 12:03 PM with the headline "Costco clears construction hurdles with Richland."