The Costco of Housing is Costco? The retailer's plan to use CA housing laws

[happyopossum]

> It will also result in housing that looks like a stack of shipping containers.

This is an either temporally or willfully ignorant statement - prefabricated housing hasn’t had to look like a boring box in decades. I’ve been involved in prefab projects where you couldn’t tell the on-site builds from the prefabs.

Also there’s an elevation rendering of the project that clearly isn’t ’a stack of shipping containers’.

[MBCook]

That was what struck me. Sure it could look like shipping containers, but that seems very uncharitable.

Without plans or a render showing that’s the case I don’t know why we can’t assume it would be at least a little better looking.

[Turing_Machine]

> prefabricated housing hasn’t had to look like a boring box in decades.

Arguably all the way back to Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion house, nearly a hundred years ago.

[ozuly]

I'm continuously impressed by Costco. Not only is it one of my favorite places to shop, but I also recently recent to the Acquired episode on Costco[0] and was super impressed by how they run their business. They've continuously been able to align their unique advantages to reenforce each other and make their advantages even stronger. I highly recommend this episode to everyone.

[0] https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/costco

[zikduruqe]

And they are starting their own ad network.

https://todaysecommerce.com/2024/06/costco-is-working-on-ad-...

[ramesh31]

The beauty of competent management from the very top down. They understand that paying people a living wage has become a massive competitive advantage these days.

[meragrin_]

> their unique advantages

What are those? I never really found any sort of "unique advantage" of Costco. Certainly nothing to drive the extra distance past Sam's. While I had a membership, it was largely more expensive or didn't have what I wanted.

[1vuio0pswjnm7]

They also treat their employees well. (Not with free food or other so-called "tech" company nonsense). I have been impressed with the people from Costco I have met at conferences.

[elevatedastalt]

Any housing that can be built is good housing for places that have a severe supply-side constraint of housing.

The only way to bring house prices down is to build build build.

I'd actually be quite trustful of a Costco apartment.

[TMWNN]

I would very, very gladly live in a Costco apartment complex above a Costco store. Being able to buy Costco rotisserie chicken, ribs, and pizza anytime? Sign me up!

[Arrath]

I wonder what the return policy will be like.

[ryandrake]

I wonder if they plan to also build all the infrastructure required to support all these new people living in these new housing. Like expanded electric service, water & sewer, trash pickup, transportation, schools, another fire station. Or are taxpayers going to have to pick up that bill? Build build build is great, we need more housing, but you can't do it without also planning for all the supporting infrastructure.

[chrisbrandow]

Of course, the fact that this housing will be filled up immediately, will have almost no effect on anyone’s opinion in the local governing world

[neilv]

I like what I know of Costco, as a service, and as a company. But that architectural rendering, of the cool housing straddling the no-frills Costco big box, reminded me of Idiocracy's "Welcome to Costco; I love you".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdNmOOq6T8Y

[seanmcdirmid]

It is just like how they are tearing down one story grocery stores and building them as 4 or 5+1s with the store on ground floor and housing up top. This is much better land use anyways.

[Apocryphon]

I too am in a Costco household, one of my friends is a long time employee there and loves it, and I would like to visit a Costco apartment open house, and the satire that this proposal (a big box store getting into residential housing) reminds me of is Sorry to Bother You's WorryFree:

https://thebaffler.com/latest/worryfree-seymour

[josephpmay]

Hi, I'm the person who wrote the Twitter thread this article is based off of, so happy to answer any questions about it

[carabiner]

Do you regret writing it in misleading clickbait style, calling it a "prison"?

[smugma]

The article had a great headline but I didn’t really understand it. Your Twitter post filled in the missing details.

Thank you!

[Arrath]

As a former (well, still card holding) union laborer I have to express my displeasure at Costco circumventing the prevailing wage requirements by building modular sections offsite and trucking them in. Other than that, I like the mixed use approach to this building.

[someluccc]

If only housing could be more expensive

[klooney]

Even if the modular housing factory is union?

In the Bay area there's an SF carpenter's union vs Vallejo carpenter's union thing, because there's a modular housing factory in Vallejo.

[jerlam]

I like Costco but I feel that living next to it wouldn't be significantly better than living a bit farther away. It's a place where people with larger homes can buy in bulk and save time and money by storing those bulk items in their homes. There is no good reason to go to Costco more frequently than you can use up those bulk items, or until they expire. Gas and pharmacy would be borderline.

I live within walking distance of a nice grocery store and would definitely prefer that over a Costco. There are more hot food items than just a hot dog and two types of pizza. It's easy to pick up a small amount of fresh ingredients to make a meal at the last minute.

[modeless]

Costco is great but their parking lots are awful. I hope the housing has a separate parking entrance because fighting Costco shoppers every time I leave home sounds like a nightmare.

[throwup238]

On the other hand, imagine all the money you could save if you just had a $1.50 hot dog and soda for every meal. You could eat on less than $200 a month.

If you ate nothing but pepperoni pizza, you could feed a family of four for like $500 a month!

[m463]

But when will you have to leave home?

[hi-v-rocknroll]

So a standard mixed-used development but with certifications of how wonderful and eco-friendly they are allows throwing out most regulations everyone else has to follow, creating a preferential, tiered system. That sounds fair and respectful of community interests. /s

[MichaelMug]

Will Costco be collecting rent? The mental gymnastics are impressive. It’s not a good thing that Costco gets to expand to housing. This is just like private equity and 401k’s buying houses. People should be able to own their own housing not become lifelong renters.

[Arrath]

Should Costco be explicitly banned from non-commercial development in the otherwise unused air-space above their store's footprint? Forced to sell the air rights to other developers? This mixed-use approach seems like a much better use of the lot space.

I wholeheartedly agree that people should be able to own their own housing, but I don't see the two as mutually incompatible in the larger scheme.

[javagram]

Rental apartments are important for people who plan to live there less than 5-7 years. If all apartments were condos and there was no renting , where are people who don’t have a down payment saved supposed to live? What if they need to move to a larger place after a year or two?