Masssive Costco in northwest Fresno gets green light. Still needs judge approval
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Council re-approved the Costco project; a judge must still decide its legality.
- Coalition that sued says it will still oppose project in court.
- City manager responds to report that said city exempted Costco from $40M in fees.
Plans for a new Costco center on Herndon Avenue and Riverside Drive — blocked last summer by an environmental lawsuit — were re-approved by Fresno’s City Council on Thursday.
But for construction to move forward, a judge still has to decide whether the Costco planning revisions made by the city satisfy his ruling.
City Attorney Andrew Janz and Anna Shimko, an attorney representing Costco, both said during Thursday’s meeting they believe the revised plans will pass the legal test.
“Everything the city has done has been well crafted (and) speaks to everything the court raised,” Shimko said.
The northwest Fresno Costco would replace the aging Costco on Shaw Avenue and would be much larger. Its main building would be 219,000 square feet, and the complex would include 32 gas pumps and a car wash. The city estimates the project would generate millions of dollars annually in tax revenue.
Councilmembers have touted the project’s economic potential and cautioned that Costco could pack up and take its new store to Madera County if it continues to run into setbacks in Fresno. The council first approved the project in 2024, but the city was sued shortly afterward by a community group called the Herndon-Riverside Coalition for Responsible Planning and Development.
Last year, Fresno County Judge Jonathan Skiles ruled the project’s environmental analysis was inadequate because it was based on a 2021 pollution-reduction plan that had itself been thrown out in a separate court case, and that the city had also failed to prove that its own laws allow the distribution space.
The analysis now cites a 2014 pollution-reduction plan instead, which the city says is just one on a list of environmental standards the project will adhere to. Planning documents also now include a section that cites Fresno’s Municipal Code to justify the project’s distribution space.
Daniel Brannick, an attorney representing the coalition, says neither update is enough to make the project legal.
“If you approve the project today, we’re going to be back in court,” he told the council.
Karbassi blasts coalition
Northwest Councilmember Mike Karbassi has long accused the Herndon-Riverside coalition of NIMBY behavior and of not truly being concerned with environmental issues.
On Thursday, he vigorously defended the Costco project as economically necessary for Fresno.
“It keeps jobs here,” he said. “Costco pays a living wage to folks, so they can have a job and raise their families in this community, not have to go somewhere else.”
Of the coalition, Karbassi said: “All they care about is raising the cost of living for working families. I admit I resent that.”
But Brannick said the legal trouble the city has faced over its Costco planning has been “self-inflicted.”
“We don’t oppose Costco, and we’re not running a popularity contest,” he said. “What we oppose is not calling things what they are and not following the law.”
To him, the project’s environmental review remains inadequate and ignores the true impacts of the 129,326 extra vehicle miles traveled daily that the new Costco is expected to cause in the region. He also says the 47,000-square-foot distribution space is an industrial use that the city’s laws simply do not allow in a commercial space.
Shimko, the Costco lawyer, said the city is the entity in “the best position to interpret its zoning rules.”
“We are quite confident that nothing has been presented to you to undermine your zoning consistency findings,” she told councilmembers.
Did City of Fresno waive $40M in impact fees for northwest Costco?
During the meeting, City Manager Georgeanne White also took aim at a recent news report that said the Fresno Planning Commission exempted the Costco project from paying $40 million worth of fees to mitigate the increase in vehicle trips it will cause.
The nonprofit newsroom Fresnoland reported that the city’s mitigation program, approved last fall, charges $295 per unmitigated vehicle mile traveled. Since Costco is adding nearly 130,000 vehicle miles traveled, its mitigation costs under the program could have been almost $40 million. Costco was charged none of these mitigation fees.
But White and Costco representatives said Thursday that there was no exemption because the mitigation program does not apply to projects whose transportation analyses were completed before the program was approved. Costco’s transportation analysis was completed prior to the council’s first approval of the project in 2024.
White said the city is not “legally able to apply VMT fees” to the project and that the planning commission also “has no authority to exempt fees.”
City staff told the council that Costco has paid about $8.3 million in development fees for this project.
This story was originally published May 21, 2026 at 4:49 PM.
