The Idaho Press reports that Meridian's second Costco is going up on the southeast corner of Meridian Road and Lake Hazel Road, and it's expected to open in late 2026 as one of the chain's largest stores anywhere, with a 16-pump gas station and close to a thousand parking stalls. That's the headline everyone in South Meridian already knows. The more useful story is happening on the other side of the intersection, where the retail parcel meant to complement that Costco has already revised its own plan in under a year, shrinking from a big anchor tenant vision down to a lineup of small pads and drive-thrus. If you live near that corner, the second story tells you more about what your errands will actually look like than the store's opening date does.
The Corner Everyone Already Watches
According to Yahoo News, the Costco sits inside Brighton Corp.'s Pinnacle development, on about 24 acres at the southeast corner of Meridian and Lake Hazel. Filed plans show a roughly 155,000-square-foot warehouse connected to a distribution center, plus the fuel station and parking. Brighton's Jon Wardle told the Meridian City Council the company's goal was to finish roads and site improvements by August 2026, ahead of the store's own opening. That includes a new intersection on Lake Hazel that will eventually extend south as a street called Prevail, with prep work already underway to signalize it later. In other words, the traffic pattern around that corner is changing before a single Costco member badge gets scanned, because the road work runs on its own schedule, separate from the store's.
The same Pinnacle filing shows what else is approved for that southeast corner beyond the warehouse itself: 100,000 square feet of general retail, another 100,000 square feet of medical or office space, and more than 58 acres set aside for housing. Northwest of the Costco site, Brighton has already built 358 homes as part of Pinnacle and could add roughly 1,600 more before the development is finished. That's the scale of what's committed on that one corner. What isn't committed yet is the parcel directly across the street.
Across The Street, The Plan Keeps Getting Smaller
The northeast corner of Meridian and Lake Hazel, just over eight acres that currently holds a single-family home and an animal stable, belongs to a separate developer called Lockehouse Retail Group, which has an office in Eagle and has previously worked with retailers like Sprouts, Bi-Mart, Trader Joe's, El Pollo Loco, Kohl's, and Target. In October 2025, BoiseDev reported that the early site plan for that parcel showed six buildings split into three labeled "proposed" and three labeled "potential," with the largest proposed building sized at 20,515 square feet, big enough for a full-size grocery or general retail anchor.
By September 2026, BoiseDev reported that the plan had changed. The updated version shows seven buildings, all now labeled simply as future construction, with three of them built as drive-thrus. The four retail buildings are sized at 4,800, 6,000, 7,700, and 7,800 square feet, adding up to 26,300 square feet across all four, with each individual building well short of the 20,515-square-foot largest building proposed under the earlier plan. Total planned retail space across the whole site now sits at 33,755 square feet on just over eight and a half acres, smaller and more fragmented than what developers were describing a year ago. Plans are still in early stages and can change again, but the direction of that change matters. A shift from one big building to seven smaller ones with multiple drive-thrus usually points toward quick-service restaurants, coffee, and service retail rather than a grocery store or big-box anchor. Nobody has confirmed tenant names publicly, so the honest answer for now is that the mix is still being decided in real time, and the shape of the site plan is the best clue available until leases get signed.
What's Already Working While The Corner Sorts Itself Out
None of that uncertainty touches Discovery Park, which sits less than two miles west on Lake Hazel Road between Eagle and Locust Grove and has been open since 2019. At 64 acres, it's Meridian's largest regional park, and it's already built out with the kind of amenities that don't wait on a retail tenant list to be useful:
- A playground and seasonal splash pad with sand and water play, dual zip lines, roller slides, and a small climbing wall
- Six pickleball courts plus two tennis courts dual-striped for pickleball, bocce ball courts, a 40-yard dash challenge, and basketball courts
- A teen area with a skatepark, sand volleyball, hammock poles, and a WiFi-equipped shelter
- A bike park and pump track, three softball fields (two lit for night games), public art, picnic shelters, and paved walking paths
The City of Meridian's park page also notes room set aside for a future community garden, so there's at least one more amenity still to come even here. But the park itself is open and running.
The Neighborhoods Filling In Around Lake Hazel Road
The stretch of Lake Hazel Road between Eagle Road and Meridian Road has absorbed a wave of new subdivisions alongside Pinnacle, and the most recent addition tells its own small story about how development adapts to what's already on the land. According to BoiseDev, permit documents filed in August 2026 show plans for Ravenna Subdivision, 127 single-family homes on just over 19 acres near Locust Grove Road, built out in two phases: 84 homes and a common area on the north portion first, then 43 more homes on the south portion along with pathways following the Rawson Canal. The application describes the project as an infill development, and rather than piping the canal underground the way many subdivisions do, the developers are asking the city for special permission to leave it open and build a walking path alongside it, on the grounds that piping it isn't feasible on this particular site. It's a small detail, but it's the kind of thing that shapes what a walk around the neighborhood actually looks like once it's built.
Ravenna sits next to Brighton's Pinnacle development, and other newer neighborhoods have filled in nearby as well, including the Keep, Keep West, and Lavender Heights. The corridor is also close to Lake Hazel Elementary, Lake Hazel Middle School, and Hillsdale Elementary, which anchor the area for families already living along that stretch.
What This Adds Up To
None of this settles into one clean date on a calendar. The Costco's late 2026 opening is the number most people repeat, but the road work around it started earlier and runs on a separate track, the retail parcel across the street is still actively being redesigned by its own developer, and the residential buildout along Lake Hazel Road keeps adding new subdivisions with their own site-specific negotiations, like Ravenna's canal pathway. If you already live near this corner, the practical takeaway isn't a single opening date to circle. It's that the corner is being built in layers, on different timelines, by different companies making different decisions, and the retail site across from the new Costco is the layer still most in flux. Watching the site plan filings is a better way to know what's actually coming than watching for a grand opening banner.
If you're trying to figure out what a specific corner or subdivision along Lake Hazel Road means for a home you already own, or one you're thinking about in this part of South Meridian, I'd be glad to walk through what's built, what's filed, and what's still just a rendering. Schedule a free consultation with Stephen Sawyer and we'll go through it together.
