The parking lot at Spring Prairie Center is huge, and for about ten months it has had nothing to serve. Costco's last day in the 136,000-square-foot warehouse was Monday, Nov. 24, 2025. The next morning at 8 a.m., the new warehouse opened less than a mile up the road at North Town Center. That left behind one of the largest single retail buildings in the valley. It had been a Costco since 2006.
In September we finally learned the building's next tenant. WinCo Foods, the discount grocery chain, has submitted plans to the City of Kalispell to move in. We still don't know when the doors will open, and WinCo isn't saying.
How the building got here
The building sat empty with no announced tenant for a long time, and nobody at City Hall knew what would replace it:
- 2006. Costco moves into the Spring Prairie building.
- Jan. 2, 2025. The Daily Inter Lake reports that Costco has submitted a permit for its North Town Center store, but the permit hasn't been approved yet.
- March 25, 2025. The city issues retail building permits for the new Costco at 345 and 305 Cascade Loop.
- Nov. 24–25, 2025. The old warehouse closes and the new one opens the next day.
- January 2026. The city manager tells the Flathead Beacon the building is still vacant and he doesn't know what will replace it.
- Sept. 5, 2026. The Daily Inter Lake reports that WinCo has submitted preliminary building permit plans.
- Sept. 15, 2026. KPAX reports the city has confirmed the plans are in permit review. WinCo confirms it filed them but says it can't release any other details.
The Costco move shows how long these projects take. The permit was filed by early January 2025 and the new store opened in late November, about eleven months later. That was for a building put up from scratch on open commercial land.
What "no major change of use" tells you
The most useful detail so far comes from PJ Sorensen, Kalispell's director of development. He told the Daily Inter Lake: "It looks like they are going to demo the inside of the building and make some signage and landscaping changes outside, but there is no major change of use."
So the plan is to put a warehouse-style store into a building that already was one. The structure stays and the interior gets rebuilt. The architectural, structural, civil and landscaping plans were all still under review as of early September. No reporting so far shows a final permit approval, a hiring schedule or a store design.
Size is one of the open questions. Helena's WinCo is about 84,000 square feet. The old Costco is 136,000. WinCo hasn't said how it plans to use the extra room, and the filings reported so far don't say either.
How WinCo's other Montana stores went
Kalispell would join WinCo's four existing Montana stores, in Billings, Helena, Missoula and Bozeman. Each one got built a different way, and the differences help with guessing a timeline here.
| Store | Site | Opened | Time from early reports to opening |
|---|---|---|---|
| Billings | Former Kmart lot; old building torn down, new store built | March 3, 2019 | Filing date not shown in captured coverage |
| Helena | About 84,000 sq. ft. store | March 3, 2019, 9 a.m. | Not established in local coverage |
| Missoula | Former Shopko, bought and remodeled | Feb. 22, 2021 | About 16 months after October 2019 reports |
| Bozeman | New store near Max Avenue and Cattail Street | Feb. 22, 2021 | About 2½ years after formal plans in August 2018 |
Missoula is the closest match to Kalispell. There, WinCo bought an empty big-box store and remodeled it. When the purchase first came out in October 2019, KPAX reported there was no official construction or opening timeline. The store opened Monday, Feb. 22, 2021. That stretch ran through 2020, so it's one data point, not a forecast. Even so, it shows that a reused building with no change of use still took more than a year from first reports to opening day.
Bozeman shows the slow end of the range. WinCo first looked at a site in April 2016 and dropped that plan. A new version was informally submitted in October 2017, and formal plans followed in August 2018. The city approved them, and then appeals and a lawsuit followed. Opponents raised traffic and jobs at existing grocery stores. The court found that city zoning rules don't protect against commercial competition. Kalispell's project, as described so far, is a remodel without a change of use, so it isn't the kind of new-construction fight Bozeman had.
What opening day looked like elsewhere
On March 3, 2019, the Billings parking lot was packed. Shoppers stood in line in minus-14-degree weather, and by 5:30 p.m. the average wait was 90 minutes. Some shoppers told KTVQ they liked the prices and the added grocery competition. Bozeman's opening day also drew a packed lot.
Both stores came with large job counts. The Billings Gazette reported that WinCo was looking for about 160 employees. Helena's store was expected to employ more than 150 full- and part-time workers. No hiring number has been announced for Kalispell.
What's different at the register
If you've only shopped the chains already in the Flathead, a few of WinCo's rules will be new:
- No membership. WinCo doesn't charge a membership fee.
- No credit cards. WinCo's FAQ says it generally takes cash, checks, debit, WIC and EBT.
- You bag your own groceries. The company says this and the no-credit-card policy help keep prices low.
- Open late, often around the clock. Most WinCo stores are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, except on certain holidays. Kalispell's hours haven't been announced.
- Bulk buying. WinCo's warehouse-style stores sell groceries and household items in bulk.
The rest of the stretch up US 93
North of Spring Prairie, development has kept going. In May 2025, the Flathead Beacon reported 22 commercial lot sales at North Town Center, 80,000 square feet of commercial space built and another 300,000 square feet in the works. Costco and Kalispell Toyota were both named as relocations. Kalispell Ford and Sherwin Williams were already built there, and medical offices, a dental office, a mortgage company and financial services were in planning or development. Home2 Suites went up on Rivers Edge Loop, and a nearby sign announced Kalispell Superwash.
Traffic is part of the picture too. A signal has been built at Rose Crossing and US 93. The developers of Tronstad Meadows agreed to install a signal in that project's first phase, but no completion date has been published. None of the reporting so far ties any road work to the WinCo plans.
The next confirmed step is the city's permit decision. Until WinCo announces hiring or an opening date, the only firm facts are what Sorensen described: interior demolition, new signage, new landscaping, and the same kind of business inside the building.
An empty anchor store getting a new tenant changes how a whole corner of town gets used, and we follow those changes closely across the Flathead. If you'd like to hear about properties in north Kalispell before they show up anywhere else, Montana Property Brokers will send you our exclusive off-market listings.
