Bismarck – As the Bismarck area continues to see population growth,
that growth is attractive to businesses that continue to want to call the capital city home, and one of those–operates in bulk.

Just outside the busy Highway 83 corridor in North Bismarck sits nearly 23 acres of prime real estate.

It’s a piece of land so attractive, it’s apparently caught the eye of Costco, the members-only warehouse chain.

The Washington State based company has taken several steps that would fuel speculation they plan on coming to Bismarck.

Some of those being a request and approval to operate a gas station on this chunk of land along Highway 83.

The company has also submitted a plan for a 157-thousand square foot facility but has yet to submit any formal building plans.

Bismarck Mayor Steve Bakken tells KX News he would love to see new businesses with jobs come to town.

“I’ve made no bones about the fact that we operate as a business, the City of Bismarck, and facilitate economic growth, that economic development piece for me is a huge component of what we need to do as a community to be successful”, said Bakken.

At Tuesday night’s Bismarck city commission meeting, members were expected to vote on Costco’s request to have the city annex land to them in what would appear to be the next step in the process.

But during the meeting, a representative for 2 groups of Investors who own the land asked for a continuance because the sale of the land isn’t complete.

“There are still some negotiations that are going on with Costco, that we would like to get finalized before we take final action on the annexation”, said Lon Romsaas, the land owner Representative.

And in a nearly unprecedented move the commission voted to continue the entire public hearing until August 27th, meaning it’s technically still open to comment from the public.

People I spoke with earlier were all for a Costco coming to the Capital City.

“I do alot of business at Sam’s Club, but I thing that Costco would be a good addition to the Bismarck area because it’s growing here,” said Bismarck Resident Rich Skjonsby.

“We’re members of Sam’s Club, but we’ve shopped at Costco before, they do offer a lot of different stuff as far as you can purchase and we’re happy with stuff we’ve bought from Costco before”, said bismarck Resident Cory Taylor.

Now KX News spoke off-camera with the representative for the land owners and he would not tell us what was holding up negotiations, only saying that they were on going.

Also, everyone we spoke with seemed to want the Costco, but they weren’t sure Bismarck could support two Membership warehouses.