Shoppers at the Orland Park Costco should expect construction into next year, as the store builds an expanded gas station at the same time it adds a roundabout to the exit.
Work is also underway on the Amazon retail center on the southwest corner of the busy 159th Street and LaGrange Road intersection, and on the village’s Ravinia Avenue extension project that will connect the retail center to Costco through the roundabout.
“We thought if they are all happening at the same time — yes it is a bigger pain, but then we will come out of it and then be done with it — instead of one goes and the next comes and the next comes,” Orland Park engineering director Khurshid Hoda said. “It stretches the pain a little bit longer.”
The Village Board about a year ago approved Costco’s plans to accommodate for a steep growth in membership and sales seen at the 9915 W. 159th St. store, which opened in 2006.
Hoda said Tuesday the plan includes moving the gas station away from the store, west of Ravinia Avenue, and installing 20 more pumps. Costco originally planned to have 40 pumps, rather than the now planned 32, but the store could opt to add more in the future, he said.
While construction is expected to wrap up on the roundabout and the majority of the Ravinia Avenue extension to 161st Street by the end of this year, the new gas station won’t likely open until sometime next year, Hoda said. The existing gas station will be demolished after the new one is built, making room for more parking spaces.
“I was told by Costco that our Costco store is number two in the state (in sales volume), and it might be number one after this gas station expands,” Hoda said.
Costco originally planned to use stop signs to control traffic, but “we didn’t agree with that,” Hoda said, requiring the store design and fund construction of the roundabout as a condition of project approval.
“We pushed for a more comprehensive solution, and we believe that roundabout was a better solution,” he said.
On the north side of the store, a new lane will direct traffic into the parking lot, and shoppers will exit through the roundabout, which was designed with lanes wide enough to accommodate 18-wheelers and emergency vehicles, Hoda said.
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The nearly 230,000-square-foot Amazon retail center will also be accessible through the roundabout once the Ravinia Avenue extension is complete, according to Hoda. The extension could reroute as much as 25% of the traffic from the 159th Street and LaGrange Road intersection, the village estimated.
At the village’s Jan. 6 Plan Commission meeting, Katie Jahnke Dale, a Chicago attorney representing Amazon, said the retail space at the site of the former Petey’s II restaurant “will likely be one of the first of its kind.”
Jahnke Dale said Amazon aims to create a more comprehensive shopping experience where visitors to the store in person can use their phone or an in-store kiosk to find items not on the sales floor.
Customers can also order items to be brought to their vehicles, either at the front of the store or in a reserved parking spot.
Retail customers will enter off 159th Street, LaGrange Road or 161st Street while delivery drivers enter through the south or west, coming off of 161st Street, and have a designated parking area south of the building.
Six acres will be dedicated to open and landscaped space, and Amazon plans to construct a stormwater detention area on the property, according to the plans. The store is on track to open late next year, Hoda said.