Costco Celina site advances as utility work begins in Texas

Utility work has started at Costco’s future Celina site, a small construction step that carries bigger meaning for warehouse employees watching when hiring, training, and freight planning will have to kick in. Oncor began the work on June 19 at 3445 South Preston Road in Collin County, moving the project out of the paperwork stage and closer to the point where staffing, equipment delivery, and opening logistics become real deadlines.

The Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation lists the Costco Wholesale Warehouse as a privately funded project on private land for private use, with construction set to run from June 1, 2026 through November 30, 2026. The filing puts the warehouse at an estimated $18.5 million. A separate filing covers the Costco Wholesale Fuel Facility at 3435 South Preston Road, also with a June 1 to November 30 timeline and an estimated cost of $2.6 million.

For workers, that timeline matters because utility work usually sits near the front end of a longer chain. Once the ground work is underway, the clock tightens on when local recruiting can begin in earnest, when managers can start matching transfer interest against staffing needs, and when receiving, stock and fresh departments will need names assigned to shifts. The opening date also shapes how nearby warehouses handle the extra load, since new-store launches can pull experienced employees into training, soft opening support and transition work.

Oncor said it completed comprehensive electric infrastructure inspections in Celina in October 2025 and began a reliability improvement project there in February 2026. Local reporting says the utility work at the Costco site includes new utility poles and traffic safety measures, a reminder that the warehouse is being built inside a road network already under pressure from multiple projects across the city.

The Celina warehouse has been described as roughly 158,000 square feet and as the anchor of the 77-acre Crossing at Moore Farm development at Preston Road and Ownsby Parkway. The site is planned to include a pharmacy, optical center, hearing aid clinic and fuel station, which means the opening will affect more than the front end and sales floor. It will also affect how Costco schedules specialized departments and how much cross-training managers need before the doors open.

Community Impact reported in August 2025 that the Celina Costco was expected to open in late 2026, and the latest utility milestone keeps that window in view. For Costco employees, the bigger signal is not the poles or the trenching. It is that the warehouse is now far enough along that the labor plan will have to catch up fast.