Costco anchors first mixed-use housing project in South Los Angeles

Thrive Living is building an 800-unit apartment complex above a Costco warehouse at 5035 Coliseum Street in Baldwin Village, a first-of-its-kind mixed-use project in South Los Angeles. The 5-acre site near Coliseum and La Brea is set to include 184 apartments reserved for low-income households, or about 23% of the total, and is expected to open in 2027 at a cost of about $425 million.

The project shows how affordable-housing deals are becoming a way for big-box chains to enter dense city neighborhoods where conventional retail sites are scarce. Local residents pushed for Costco to serve as the anchor tenant, seeing the warehouse as a way to bring groceries and household goods closer to home. Jordan Brill said residents had asked for Costco to anchor the development.

For Costco, the economics are straightforward. Ron Vachris said the Los Angeles project gives the company access to a market it would otherwise struggle to enter because it would be nearly impossible to find 25 acres for a traditional warehouse in a dense urban area. The new store format lets Costco plug into a neighborhood that could not easily support one of its standard suburban boxes.

That access comes with tradeoffs that will shape how residents experience the project. The complex will place a major retail destination next to hundreds of apartments in a part of the city where land is limited and development pressure is high. Supporters see easier access to essentials and a rare influx of investment. Skeptics of mixed-use redevelopment in crowded neighborhoods often point to added traffic, heavier loading activity and the strain that large commercial projects can place on nearby small businesses.

Target has taken a different route into city neighborhoods, but the logic is similar. The company says its typical U.S. store averages about 125,000 square feet, yet it can operate in spaces ranging from dense urban blocks to college campuses. Target has more than 1,800 stores nationwide, and its urban small-format strategy dates back at least to the 2012 debut of CityTarget.

In March 2026, Target said it planned to raise capital spending to about $5 billion this year, including more than $1 billion in additional capital expenditures for new stores, remodels, technology and supply-chain investments. Together with the Costco project in South Los Angeles, it underscored a national retail shift: as cities push harder on housing, some of the country’s largest chains are finding their opening through the housing sites themselves.