A Big-Box Milestone on Preston Road
Construction is officially underway on a Costco Wholesale warehouse at the corner of Preston Road and Ownsby Parkway in Celina. Permits filed with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation show a June 2026 construction start and an estimated completion of late November 2026 — meaning Celina residents could be pushing flatbed carts through the doors before the end of the year.
At 158,000 square feet, this will be a full-size warehouse club, not a scaled-down format. For context, that footprint is roughly equivalent to two and a half standard grocery stores side by side. It will anchor a larger mixed-use development on the same corridor that will also include a Lowe’s home improvement store, making the Preston Road and Ownsby Parkway intersection one of the most significant new retail clusters in Collin County’s northern tier.
Why This Corner, Why Now
The Preston Road corridor has been drawing major retail interest as Celina’s population has expanded at a pace that put the city on national growth-rate radar years ago. The Costco site sits on what is shaping up to be a destination retail strip rather than a single stand-alone box. Pairing a membership warehouse club with a home improvement anchor is a deliberate commercial strategy — shoppers who drive to one store will cross the parking lot to the other, and both retailers benefit from shared traffic.
For Celina households that have been making the drive south to Frisco or Allen for a Costco run, the math is straightforward: fewer miles, less time, more incentive to pick up the membership or renew one that lapsed because the nearest location felt too far.
What’s Already Confirmed
- Location: Preston Road and Ownsby Parkway, Celina
- Size: 158,000 square feet
- Construction start: June 2026
- Estimated completion: Late November 2026
- Adjacent development: Part of a larger mixed-use project that includes a Lowe’s
What Comes With a Costco
Beyond the warehouse floor, a Costco of this size typically brings a fuel station, a tire center, a pharmacy, and an optical department — services that reduce the number of separate trips residents need to make each week. The fuel station alone tends to generate its own traffic pattern, with members timing fill-ups around shopping visits.
From a city revenue standpoint, a 158,000-square-foot membership retailer with high per-transaction values generates meaningful sales tax receipts. Those dollars flow back into municipal services — a point the Celina Economic Development Corporation and the Chamber of Commerce, which are already running the Summer Shop Celina Passport Program to support local businesses this summer, will no doubt factor into longer-term planning conversations.
What Residents Should Know Before It Opens
Construction timelines on projects this size can shift, and a late-November target leaves little buffer before the holiday shopping season. If the build stays on schedule, the opening could land squarely in peak warehouse-club territory — the weeks when Costco locations everywhere see some of their highest foot traffic of the year.
Present Costco members will be able to use the Celina location immediately at opening; membership is national, so no transfer or upgrade is required. New members who have never held a Costco card can sign up at any club location or online in advance.
For neighbors immediately adjacent to the Preston Road and Ownsby Parkway intersection, the construction activity will continue for the next several months. Expect lane adjustments and turn restrictions typical of large commercial site work in that area.
One Piece of a Larger Retail Picture
The Costco project does not stand alone. Separately, a nearly 64,000-square-foot Academy Sports + Outdoors is in development at 3525 S. Preston Road, adding a major sporting goods and outdoor retailer to the same general corridor. Between the two anchors, Celina’s southern Preston Road stretch is being transformed into a regional shopping draw — the kind of destination that pulls shoppers from neighboring communities rather than sending Celina residents out of town.
For a city that has grown as fast as Celina has, the arrival of warehouse-scale retail is less a surprise than a logical next chapter. The construction fencing is up. The timeline is set. Late 2026 is the target.
