Costco in Cape Breton? CBRM mayor says it's worth asking

Can Cape Breton actually support a Costco Warehouse? 

The mayor of the Cape Breton Regional Municipality says it’s certainly a question worth asking.

“I think Costco has looked at all Atlantic Canada regions, and it’s something we’ve been supportive of,” CBRM Mayor Cecil Clarke told the Cape Breton Post. 

According to company statistics, Costco says it typically looks for specific site demographics, spatial metrics, and strict construction timelines when building a new warehouse club.

Under normal circumstances, the big-box firm would typically require a population of 200,000-plus within an eight-kilometre radius, and a median income of $75,000 and up.

Store sizes might fall around, or well above, the 160,000-square-foot mark. 

Nova Scotia’s two Costco locations — one at Bayers Lake Industrial Park, near Halifax, and a second at Dartmouth Crossing, near Dartmouth — each take up around 182,000 square feet. A Costco in the St. John’s, N.L., neighbourhood of Galway, touted to be largest one in the country — stands at 190,000 square feet. 

“I know as they do their analysis of what would be a smaller market — like for instance, a Sydney market — it is probably more attuned to the size of a Costco that would be in Fredericton.”

According to the Daily Gleaner in New Brunswick, the Fredericton location was said to be 146,000 square feet when it first opened in 2011.

Population-wise, statistics from the City of Fredericton say the provincial capital’s metropolitan area is just over the 125,000 mark, with the city itself at 79,000.

Meanwhile, New Brunswick’s two other Costco locations, in Saint John and Moncton, are listed at around 142,000 square feet and 164,000 square feet, respectively. And metropolitan population sizes for both cities come in at 144,543 (Saint John) and 196,143 (Moncton), respectively.

By comparison, CBRM’s population is listed as 111,929, according to 2025 data from the Nova Scotia Department of Finance. 

“There are different sizes of Costco (warehouses), so you can still have a Costco without having to have one that would be of a very large footprint like the one you see in Halifax (or Dartmouth),” Clarke said.

But to fill that void in the marketplace, and to offset the hours-long trips to the mainland’s Costco locations, Port Hawkesbury and Sydney each offer Running Man Grocery Mart franchises, which serve as Costco replacements and built on smaller land footprints.

Interestingly, according to KTOO, a non-commercial educational radio station in Juneau, Alaska, the state’s capital city carries the smallest known Costco in the United States — with city assessor’s records showing total square footage at just 76,696.

Still, talk of Sydney landing a Costco franchise has persisted for years.  

When Membertou announced the construction of its Seventh Exchange retail hub in 2021, community rumours and online speculation occasionally linked the site to a potential Costco location. 

Then last May, Halifax radio station Move 100 sparked more Costco talk when it posted on its social media site that “according to a Costco staff member who was in planning meetings, there will be a Costco in Cape Breton by 2030.” 

Kelsea MacNeil, director of public relations and business development at Membertou, says the intention of Seventh Exchange is to create a one-stop shop experience for consumers — including a mix of retail, service, commercial, hospitality and food and beverage options — as well as aiming to create a diverse and vibrant community space. 

However, it appears that space will not be including a Costco. 

“Unfortunately, there isn’t any validity to these comments,” MacNeil said in an emailed statement. “We’re certainly open to conversations with Costco to come to Seventh Exchange, but there is nothing in the works at this time for us.” 

Last year, Halifax Regional Municipality Mayor Andy Fillmore had supposedly mentioned during a Lower Sackville town hall meeting that a new Costco, as well as a new Sobeys, would be coming to Middle Sackville. But a developer of land presumably set aside to hold a Costco, as well as two HRM councillors, both quashed that social media-based rumour.

“The mayor’s comment … was taken out of context,” Coun. Billy Gillis (Lower Sackville-Beaver Bank), who attended the town hall with Fillmore and Coun. John Young (Hammonds Plains-Upper Hammonds Plains-Lucasville-Middle and Upper Sackville) told The Chronicle Herald in September 2025.

“There is nothing imminent around Costco or Margeson Drive development.”

But as the chamber’s CEO, Bianca MacGregor, told The Guardian at the time, the move was “to expand their B-to-B wholesale business. We asked them if they were planning to expand to Prince Edward Island and we were told they were becoming a member of the chamber because they have wholesale business here and they want to expand that.”

Clarke said right now any talk of a Costco coming to Cape Breton is simply that — and nothing more definitive. 

“There are things we’re advocating for the community, and we’re open to (seeing what) would make more people stay within the community and spend within the community,” Clarke said. 

The Post attempted to contact a representative from Costco Canada about potentially considering a Sydney location but have not received a response. But according to a July 26 report from Retail Insider, it looks as though Costco is eyeing more expansion into central and western Canada for the time being.

— With files from Dave Stewart and Glenn MacDonald