Ashley Furniture spends $2.7M for land near new Costco

Oct. 14—Ashley Furniture recently paid $2.7 million for 3.4 acres on a retail development near the new Costco at Ellsworth and Queen Creek roads in Queen Creek.

According to data by Valley real estate tracker vizzda.com. Ashley Real Estate LLC, a subsidiary of Ashley Furniture Industries, bought the land from Vestar Queen Creek Crossing LLC and is proposing a 45,000-square-foot retail building on the site as part of a proposed development of 138,782 square feet of retail space.

That retail space would include two major buildings, two shop buildings and four pad buildings on 13 acres. Three of the four pads apparently are envisioned as drive-thru restaurants, vizzda reported.

The other large retail space on the site will be a Hobby Lobby on the overall 32-acre development called Queen Creek Crossing.

While town documents show both the Costco site and Queen Creek Crossing as separate areas, the sites are connected and "will operate as one project."

"Vestar and Costco specifically negotiated parking requirements for the Vestar parcel separate from city required code," a staff report states.

The town already has approved the site plan and preliminary plat for Vestar's Queen Creek Crossing Retail Center, which will provide 546 parking spaces instead of the normally required 668 spaces.

"It's really designed to function as one site with customers intermingling between the two," Senior Planner Evan Balmer said at a Planning Commission meeting in June.

Vestar has developed other sites in the Valley including the Queen Creek Marketplace.

"As previously mentioned, the subject site is adjacent to, and shares a parking field with, the recently approved Costco that is currently under construction," the staff report continues, adding:

"The approved site plan for Costco shows a total of 801 parking stalls. Based on the size of the Costco, 465 stalls would be required, which results in an excess of 336 parking stalls. While the Costco site is being developed separately from the subject property, there will be cross-access agreements in place between the two developments and they will essentially function as one site."

It also notes that developer Vestar "has extensive experience in developing similar projects both in Queen Creek as well as nationally and have found that 4 parking spaces per 1,000 square feet provides sufficient parking for developments of this size."

The Ellsworth Road side of the site will have a 6'-wide side walk and 4'-wide multi-use path while 6'-wide sidewalks will be placed along the center's Fulton parkway and 206th Place sides, according to the staff report.

The Costco site was approved in 2021 and this new site must still go to Town Council for final approval, but it brings the total area of the shopping center to 1.4 million square feet.