Triview Considers an Incentive Agreement with Costco on Thursday

Triview Metropolitan District’s board takes up an economic development incentive agreement with Costco at a special meeting on Thursday, Oct. 22. The district’s own policy allows it to give back up to two-thirds of its share of a project’s sales tax, along with several of its fees, for as long as 25 years.

The board of Triview Metropolitan District will consider Resolution 2026-12, “Approving an Economic Development Incentive Agreement with Costco Wholesale Corporation,” at a special meeting at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 22, at the district’s office, 1641 Baja Drive. It is the only item under the “Action Items” heading on the agenda. The agenda also schedules a closed executive session for legal advice and negotiating positions on “agreements with the Town of Monument, Donala, and Costco.”

Triview pipes the water, plows the roads and mows the parks in much of Monument. It also receives 1.5 percentage points of the Town of Monument’s 3.5 percent sales tax on purchases made inside its boundaries, and it budgeted $2.77 million from that tax for 2026. An incentive agreement gives part of that money back to the company whose project produces it.

The agenda, posted on Oct. 19, lists enclosures for most items but none for the resolution. A check of the district’s website by the Independent at 12:30 p.m. Thursday found no copy of the agreement.

The site

Monument’s planning staff held a pre-application meeting in May for “a proposed Costco location within the Town,” according to the town manager’s monthly report to the council. The town’s development map outlines one Costco site. It is 22.6 vacant acres at the southwest corner of Higby Road and Jackson Creek Parkway, between the parkway and Interstate 25, and inside Triview’s boundaries. County records list the owner as Jackson Creek Land Co. LLC. The Triview agenda does not say where a store would be built. The planning department’s Aug. 31 status report lists no formal development application for Costco, and the town’s development map, last updated Sept. 28, still shows it as a pre-application.

The parcel is zoned for planned industrial use under the town’s Regency Park rules. The town code’s use table permits “wholesale sales” there; general retail and service stations are not among the listed uses. Town staff gave Costco “preliminary guidance on the entitlement process, applicable zoning standards, and key development considerations” in May, the manager’s report says.

The district’s rules

Triview adopted an economic development incentive policy in June 2025. A qualifying project must meet five tests:

• it must sit inside the district;
• it must include a retail building of more than 100,000 square feet;
• it must be projected to produce more than $500,000 a year in sales tax for the district;
• its building must be worth more than $10 million;
• it must create more than 50 full-time, year-round jobs.

The district may then share back up to one of its 1.5 percentage points of sales tax. The remaining half point “is dedicated to renewable water and can’t be shared,” the policy says. It may also rebate water, sewer, drainage, road and other fees, for as long as 25 years. Applicants are to supply an economic impact analysis by an independent party. The board may waive any requirement “to address any extraordinary circumstances not contemplated within the Policy.”

The district has made such an agreement before. In April 2025, two months before the policy was adopted, the board approved an incentive agreement with Legacy Development Partners for Legacy at Jackson Landing, the Target-anchored center near Jackson Creek Parkway and Blevins Buckle Trail. The draft in the board’s packet for that meeting gave the developer 35.05 percent and Target 31.95 percent of the district’s sales tax from the center for 25 years, leaving Triview 33 percent. It also waived or rebated several district fees and put $3.5 million in escrow to reimburse the developer for road and infrastructure work, including on Jackson Creek Parkway and Blevins Buckle. A district spreadsheet posted with that agenda projected $17.1 million in shared sales tax over the 25 years.

The town’s share

Inside Triview, the town keeps the other two percentage points of its 3.5 percent rate, and an agreement with Triview can share only the district’s portion. The town budgeted about $13 million in sales tax for 2026 across its general, police and water funds, before passing Triview its share. Food for home consumption, as the town code defines it, is exempt from Monument’s sales tax, as are gasoline, prescription drugs and cigarettes. Candy, alcohol and prepared food are taxed, as is most other merchandise.

Costco’s annual report, filed Oct. 7, shows what its warehouses sell. Its 939 warehouses averaged $292 million in sales in the year that ended Aug. 30, and the 25 it opened that year averaged $187 million, annualized. Non-food merchandise, such as electronics, appliances, tires, clothing and furniture, made up about a quarter of the company’s sales; that category also counts online orders and items such as stamps and tickets. As an illustration, by the Independent’s calculation, a warehouse selling $187 million a year with that mix would sell about $49 million in non-food merchandise. If all of it were taxed in Monument, the town’s two points would bring in about $970,000 a year and Triview’s 1.5 points about $730,000, before any rebate to Costco. No sales projection for a store in Monument has been made public.

An incentive agreement is not a land-use approval. Triview’s policy says approval “does not imply approval of the development of property or a particular use thereof,” and any project must still meet the Town of Monument’s requirements. The town’s online council agendas since June 2025 list no Costco item.

Public comment is the fifth item on Thursday’s agenda, ahead of the vote. Triview’s five directors are Jason Gross, the board’s president; Ann-Marie Jojola; Amanda Carlton; John Gibbons; and Erik Demkowicz.

Sources & further reading

The Independent’s own coverage: Not an HOA: The Government That Runs Much of Monument, on what Triview is and how it is funded · Monument’s Target Has Its Permit. Construction Has Started., on Legacy at Jackson Landing · Three Governments, One Map: The Independent Launches TriLakes Growth, which first noted the town’s Costco pre-application entry

Triview record: Special meeting agenda, Oct. 22, 2026 · Resolution 2025-08, Economic Development Incentive Policy · Board packet, April 17, 2025, with the Legacy Development Partners application and draft agreement · Legacy development spreadsheet · 2025 Annual Report, with the 2026 budget · Board documents and notices

Town record: Town manager’s monthly report for May 2026, in the June 15, 2026 council packet · Planning Department, Current Development Review Projects status report, Aug. 31, 2026 · Current Development Review Projects map · Citizens Service Levels Advisory Committee minutes, July 9, 2026 · Monument Municipal Code, §§ 18.03.260 and 18.03.390, and § 3.09.060, on sales-tax exemptions · Taxation guidance · 2027 initial budget, with the 2026 budget, in the Oct. 5, 2026 council packet

County record: El Paso County Assessor, parcel 7100000457

Costco: Annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended Aug. 30, 2026, filed Oct. 7, 2026

Other coverage: KOAA first reported the Costco pre-application and its location on June 19, 2026

Methodology

The Independent identified the site from the Town of Monument’s own development map. That map outlines one Costco project, marked as a pre-application. Its outline coincides with El Paso County parcel 7100000457, and county district boundaries place the parcel inside both the town and Triview. No document published so far ties Resolution 2026-12 to that parcel; it is the only Costco site on the town’s record. The distance to Legacy at Jackson Landing, about 0.75 mile edge to edge, was measured between the town’s outlines of the two sites. The map was built from the town’s and county’s geographic data, with roads from OpenStreetMap.

The Legacy Development Partners terms come from the draft agreement in Triview’s packet for its April 17, 2025 meeting. The minutes record that the board approved the agreement; the signed version has not been published. The $17.1 million figure is the district spreadsheet’s projection, not a sum paid. The incentive policy, the 2025 meeting’s signed minutes and the April 2025 packet are scanned documents. They were read through optical character recognition, and every figure quoted here, including the policy’s thresholds and the Legacy percentages, was checked against the page images.

The Costco figures come from the company’s annual report for the fiscal year ended Aug. 30, 2026. Its average sales per warehouse cover all 939 warehouses, including those outside the United States, and the figure for warehouses opened in 2026 is annualized. The non-food share, 26.0 percent, is the company’s net sales in that category divided by its total net sales. Applying it to a single warehouse is the Independent’s approximation, and the calculation leaves out other goods Monument taxes, such as liquor, paper goods and food-court meals. The town’s exemptions are from Monument Municipal Code § 3.09.060 and the finance department’s taxation guidance, which lists candy among taxable foods. The town’s sales-tax figure is the sum of the 2026 budget lines for its general, police and water funds in the 2027 initial budget, and it excludes $700,000 budgeted from tax on vehicle sales.

The Costco agreement had not been published when this article was written, so the account of what Triview may offer is drawn from its policy, not from the agreement.

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