Costco advances five-store Ontario expansion, construction starts in East Windsor

East Windsor was the first place the pressure became visible: construction on Costco’s new 158,000-square-foot warehouse was already more than halfway framed, with 924 parking spots, a tire centre, a seasonal garden centre and a gas bar planned for the site. That buildout is part of a five-store Ontario pipeline that now stretches across Oakville, Caledon, Halton Hills, East Windsor and Wasaga Beach, and it will send hiring and transfer decisions rippling through existing warehouses long before every location opens.

The Oakville project shows how much planning sits behind a single warehouse opening. The Town of Oakville gave final site plan approval in February 2026, and building permits were still under review in the latest municipal filings. The plan calls for 1,000 parking spaces in all, including 305 underground stalls and 673 surface spaces, plus a gas bar, tire service area and bicycle parking. A multi-level layout with underground parking can change more than the skyline. It changes how members move, how carts are routed, how loading and traffic are handled, and how much attention managers must give to safety and flow on day one.

Halton Hills moved on a different clock. Halton Hills Council approved the retail project on June 22 at the northwest corner of Regional Road 25 and 5 Sideroad, along the Milton border. Rice Group has been pushing for construction to start as early as July, with opening targeted for October or November 2027. For nearby warehouses, that means a long lead time for recruiting, training and backfilling shifts before the doors open.

Wasaga Beach adds another layer to the labor picture. The town has described the project as a $50 million investment that would create more than 370 jobs, and the warehouse is expected to open as early as fall 2026. At 162,000 square feet, it would be the first Costco west of Barrie in the south Georgian Bay corridor, a new draw for applicants who may otherwise have looked at existing stores farther south.

Costco’s Canadian careers page shows how broad the staffing footprint can be. The company hires for warehouses, business centres, depots, contact centres, bakeries, commissaries, optical labs, pharmacy and central fill operations, so a store wave can pull in workers well beyond the front end and receiving dock. That matters in a high-wage model like Costco’s, where openings can trigger competition for experienced workers, internal transfers and overlapping training schedules across a region.

Costco has kept its usual distance from store chatter, sticking to a longstanding practice of not publicly commenting on new locations until closer to opening. In Ontario, the physical work has already begun to outpace the public talk.