The long road to approval for Western North Carolina’s first Costco is almost at an end.
Asheville City Council voted unanimously Oct. 13 to grant conditional zoning approval for the warehouse retailer’s plans at Enka Commerce Park. The move gives Costco permission to build a roughly 168,000-square-foot store and a fueling station with 32 pumps across about 40 acres off Enka Heritage Parkway.
Ashevillians have been clamoring for a Costco for years. The chain’s closest locations are in Greenville and Spartanburg — both well over an hour’s drive away in South Carolina. Mayor Esther Manheimer told the Citizen Times earlier this year that residents had said the retailer’s presence would be “life-changing for them” due to its lower costs for groceries.
As presented to Council by city planner Sam Starr-Baum, the rezoning allows Costco to ignore several of the city’s usual requirements. Its developers can protect less tree canopy and provide fewer bicycle parking spaces than they would normally, and the building will be exempt from rules about ground-floor windows and entrances. The site will also feature a “multimodal greenway path” instead of the otherwise required bike lanes.
Karen MacNeil, chair of the city’s Urban Forestry Commission, raised concerns about the tree exception during public comment, arguing that it might set a precedent for other developers.
But because Council considers each conditional zoning independently, said city attorney Brad Branham, exempting Costco wouldn’t “force Council’s hand in the future.” He also noted that developers were committing to protecting trees on parts of the site outside of city limits, which technically couldn’t be counted as part of the required canopy protection.
Speaking prior to Council’s vote, Manheimer said that Costco’s needs for space and highway access made the Enka site one of the only places in Asheville that could host a store. Given the history of aborted proposals for the commerce park, including a “big box district” proposed in 2010 and an Amazon distribution center abandoned in 2022, she said the company’s plans was a welcome development.
“We are hearing from struggling families and households about the cost of living and the need for anything and everything that we can do, to bring to bear, to make lives more affordable for people here in Asheville,” said Manheimer. “I’m glad to be able to lighten the load a little bit for folks by bringing this opportunity to Asheville.”
Before construction can proceed, Costco will need a final OK from the city’s Technical Review Committee. As outlined in a city staff report, the retailer must demonstrate compliance with Asheville’s open space and stormwater rules.
Costco must also outline changes to Smoky Park Highway and Jacob Holm Way required by the North Carolina Department of Transportation. According to a 2025 traffic study, Smoky Park in particular could see vehicle traffic increase by as much as 55% after the store’s completion. The company had cited “fairly significant” NCDOT requirements when withdrawing its initial zoning application in February.
Renee Rutherford, Costco’s eastern division director of real estate development, told Council that the retailer hoped to receive the TRC’s approval by this spring. If all goes according to plan, she said, groundbreaking would take place in the summer, and the store would open in spring 2028.
Daniel Walton is the City Government Watchdog Reporter for the Asheville Citizen Times. Email him at dwalton@citizentimes.com, and connect with him on social media through Facebook, Instagram, or Reddit.
This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Asheville Council unanimously approves zoning for Costco
