Diligence before anyone calls a center Costco-anchored
If a box is missing, the center is not anchored by a lease. It is adjacent.
Lease or no lease
Find a Costco lease in the rent roll. If it is absent, do not model club rent.
Who owns the building
The 10-K pattern is Costco-owned buildings. Arizona still needs its own deed.
Easement, not estoppel
Access may be an REA. An estoppel from a non-tenant is the wrong document.
Shop co-tenancy
Read whether shop leases require a tenant of this center, or merely a nearby grocer.
Costco's warehouse list for Arizona, on costco.com's warehouses-by-state page, showed 19 locations when this page was opened: Avondale, Buckeye, Cave Creek, Chandler, Gilbert, Glendale, Mesa, N Phoenix, NW Tucson, Paradise Valley, Prescott, Queen Creek, Scottsdale, SE Gilbert, Surprise, SW Tucson, Tempe, Thomas Road, and Tucson. That is a locator count, not a rent roll, and it will change when a warehouse opens or closes. No shopping center is named beside those clubs on this page. A named center would need a public source that puts a specific retail property next to a specific warehouse. That source was not opened, so the page stays an underwriting note.
Costco's Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended August 30, 2026 says the company operated 939 membership warehouses at that date. Of the United States and Puerto Rico total, 536 were owned land and building and 111 leased land and/or building, out of 647. A footnote says 136 of 184 leases company-wide are land-only leases where Costco owns the building. The filing does not publish an Arizona owned-versus-leased split. The careful sentence is the one the table supports: in the United States, the usual warehouse is real estate Costco owns, either the land and the building or at least the building. A shopping center next door should not budget Costco rent unless a lease in the data room says Costco is the tenant. The statewide contrast with a grocer who does lease its box is Sprouts-anchored centers and the pillar Arizona grocery-anchored centers.
What lenders diligence when the anchor pays someone else
The collateral is the shops, the pads the borrower actually owns, and the easements that let customers cross from the warehouse lot. Reciprocal easement agreements and operating covenants cover access, parking ratios, signs, and who repairs the shared drive. Those documents are not a Costco lease, and they usually cannot be amended by the shop owner alone. Shadow-anchored retail walks through that stack. Co-tenancy in the shop leases may name the club or may name a generic grocery. If the clause requires a tenant of the center to stay open, a club that was never a tenant does not satisfy it. That reading is on co-tenancy.
Capital sources follow the shop income, not the club's membership revenue. A bank or a life company will look at the shop leases that do exist. A conduit may accept the shadow traffic if the easement is durable and the rollover is understood. Bridge is for shops that are being re-leased in the club's orbit before those leases are calm. See Arizona bank, life company, Arizona CMBS, and Arizona bridge. A small grocer inside a power center, which is a lease the landlord does hold, is Trader Joe's. Arizona retail is the broader page. Net lease is the single-tenant version, which a Costco-owned warehouse is not, from the shop owner's side.
Costco Adjacent centers market context
- Nineteen Arizona warehouses on the locator
- Costco's warehouses-by-state page for Arizona listed 19 warehouses, from Avondale through Tucson, when the page was opened. The list is not a set of financed centers. Costco Wholesale, Arizona warehouse directory
- The 10-K ownership table is national
- For the year ended August 30, 2026, Costco reported 536 U.S. and Puerto Rico warehouses on owned land and building and 111 on leased land and/or building. Many leases are land-only, with Costco owning the building. Arizona is not split out. Costco Wholesale Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended August 30, 2026