Warehouse retail store to come to Lake Forest

  • 2025-06-16
Costco is looking to build its 14th store in Orange County in Lake Forest.

The plans of the company are to demolish a movie theater which is closed at the Foothill Ranch Towne Centre and build a store that spans 160,811 square feet on the site of 16 acres that includes the movie theater and the parking lot. The movie theater showed its last film in September 2024.

This store will be somewhat larger than most Costco stores and will also include a tire center. As opposed to earlier plans, this store will be a building of one story, with parking at ground level, and no gas station.

Such sites often benefit from banner printing to inform residents of such upcoming projects.

A spokesperson for the city, Jonathan Volzke, said the project is still in its preliminary stages but he expressed excitement about having a Costco in Lake Forest, as such stores can produce significant tax revenues.

The Foothill Ranch Towne Centre is in the northern part of the city, between Alton and Bake highways. This new Costco would provide competition with other big box stores in the area such as Target and Walmart and be a shorter drive for residents of Lake Forest as well as those in parts of Irvine and Mission Viejo and the Saddleback foothills.