If you have driven West Mineral Avenue near Santa Fe Drive this year, you have watched a 63-acre office campus turn into a construction site, and you may have heard the headline version of what is coming: Littleton is getting its first Costco. That is true, and it is also not the part of this project that will sit closest to the houses around it.
The more useful thing to understand, if you are comparing homes in this corridor against homes elsewhere in Littleton, is how the city structured the deal that made Mineral Place happen. The retail half got a substantial financial incentive. The 370-unit apartment community going up next to it did not, because it could not qualify for one. That difference tells you more about how this stretch of Littleton will actually function once it opens than the Costco name does.
The Deal Covers the Register, Not the Rooftops
Republic Investment Group, operating locally as RIG Mineral LLC, paid $50 million for the former Lumen Technologies office campus at 700 W. Mineral Ave in late 2024, according to reporting in the Denver Gazette. The firm then split the site and sold pieces to its development partners: an 18.5-acre parcel to Costco Wholesale for $5.8 million, where the warehouse retailer is building a roughly 160,000-square-foot store with a 32-pump fuel station and tire center, and a 17.5-acre parcel to Embrey, a San Antonio-based multifamily developer, for the residential portion of the project.
To help make the redevelopment pencil out, Littleton City Council approved a $29.5 million economic partnership incentive agreement in October 2024. Under that deal, the developer can recoup up to $29.5 million over ten years through a 50 percent share of the sales tax revenue the retail portion generates. City estimates cited by the Denver Gazette put that revenue at roughly $2.8 million in the site's first year, climbing past $9 million annually by year ten, alongside more than 800 jobs once the retail spaces are leased up.
Littleton's economic development manager, Brian Garner, told 9News this is "the biggest project that Littleton has seen in probably decades."
Every part of that math is tied to the register. It only works because retail sales generate sales tax, which the city can share back. That is the mechanism, and it explains why the deal stops exactly where the parking lot does.
370 Neighbors With No Revenue Line
Embrey's 370-unit community, named The Sullivan, sits on the residential parcel next to the retail pads. Plans call for one, two, and three bedroom units, a clubhouse, a resort-style pool with cabanas, a fitness center and yoga studio, a pickleball court, and a bike wash and repair station, with trail connections tying the property into the surrounding area. Nineteen of the 370 units are designated as affordable housing. Reporting from Bisnow on the project's approval noted plainly why this piece sat outside the incentive structure: apartments do not generate sales tax, so The Sullivan was never eligible for a share of the arrangement built for the retail side.
That is not a criticism of the project. It is a description of how the financing was built, and it matters for a buyer trying to understand what is actually arriving next to their potential street. The commercial parcels came with a decade-long financial relationship between the developer and the city, one built around performance and revenue targets. The residential parcel came with none of that. It was approved on its own land use merits, and it leases up on its own schedule, targeted for the third quarter of 2026, a window that has already opened, independent of how well the Costco and its neighboring retailers perform.
Here is how the two halves of the same 63-acre site compare on paper:
| Retail parcels (Costco, second anchor, smaller pads) | Residential parcel (The Sullivan) | |
|---|---|---|
| Acreage | 18.5 acres (Costco alone) plus additional retail pads | 17.5 acres |
| Purchase price | $5.8 million (Costco parcel) | $17.1 million |
| City incentive agreement | Yes, $29.5 million sales tax shareback over 10 years | No, excluded because apartments generate no sales tax |
| Unit count / use | ~160,000 sq ft warehouse, fuel station, tire center, additional retail pads | 370 apartment units, 19 designated affordable |
| Reported timeline | Opening targeted for 2026 per city and developer statements | Leasing targeted for Q3 2026, a window now underway |
What the Swale Fight Already Showed the Neighborhood
Before either half of the site opened, the project already produced a real conflict with a nearby resident, and it is worth knowing about because it previews how construction friction on this scale plays out in practice. As crews cleared land in early 2025, a resident named Sullivan, no relation to the apartment community's name, distributed nearly 2,000 flyers and collected about 200 signatures opposing the removal of trees and a landscaped drainage swale along West Mineral Avenue, according to a Colorado Community Media report from the Littleton Independent. His stated concern was that the pollution and heat from a large retail center would not be offset by new landscaping alone.
The city's response, also documented in that reporting, was that the development met the requirements of Littleton's Unified Land Use Code, that most removed trees sat on the developer's private property rather than city right-of-way, and that the site plan calls for more than 950 new trees, a net gain of 670 even after the removals. City officials also noted that many of the removed trees were ash, a species vulnerable to emerald ash borer infestations, and that the replacements would be hardier for an urban setting.
Nobody won or lost that argument in a formal sense. What it demonstrates is that a project this size does not arrive quietly, and residents closest to the construction had genuine, documented objections before a single storefront opened. If you are evaluating a home within walking distance of Mineral Place, that history is part of the property's recent context, not just a footnote.
The Corridor Is Turning Over, Not Just This One Site
Mineral Place is not the only project changing what this part of Littleton looks like. A separate mixed-use project from Evergreen DevCo is taking shape nearby, close to the RTD Mineral light rail stop and the South Platte River Trail, and it is expected to add more multifamily units and neighborhood-serving retail to the same stretch of the city. Separately, Republic Investment Group also sold a parcel to the newly formed Mineral Business Improvement District for $1.2 million, a detail that signals a new taxing entity has been created specifically to fund infrastructure for the commercial side of the site. That district's assessments apply to the retail parcels within its boundary, not to surrounding single-family homes, but it is one more layer of governance now attached to this stretch of Mineral Avenue that did not exist when the Lumen campus was still standing.
Taken together, this is a corridor moving from single-purpose office and industrial land to a mix of retail, rental housing, and transit-adjacent development within the space of about two years. That is a faster shift than most residential blocks in Littleton experience, and it is happening in one concentrated area rather than spread across the city.
What This Matters for If You Are Comparing Streets Right Now
None of this means proximity to Mineral Place is automatically good or bad for a specific address. It means the mechanism driving change here is different from what most median-price searches show you. A few things worth checking if you are looking at homes in this part of Littleton:
The retail incentive agreement is a sales tax shareback, not a new property tax or special assessment on nearby homes, so it will not show up on a residential tax bill the way an HOA fee or metro district levy would.
The apartment complex next door was approved without the same revenue-based scrutiny applied to the retail parcels, which means its performance, leasing pace, and long-term management are worth asking about separately from how well Costco or the second anchor perform.
Traffic patterns along Mineral Avenue and Santa Fe Drive are likely to shift once the retail side is fully open, given the scale of the development and its stated goal of drawing regional shoppers, not just neighborhood foot traffic.
The corridor's identity is still being written. Evergreen DevCo's project and the new Business Improvement District suggest this stretch of Littleton will keep evolving for several more years, not settle into a fixed shape the moment Costco opens its doors.
A Few Quick Answers
Will Mineral Place raise my property taxes if I live nearby? The $29.5 million incentive agreement is a sales tax shareback tied to the retail parcels, not a new levy on residential property. Any property tax changes for nearby homes would come through the normal county assessment process, separate from this deal.
When does Costco actually open? As of the most recent public reporting, Costco's build was on track for a 2026 opening, with construction continuing through the end of 2025. Confirm current status directly with the retailer or the city before assuming a specific month.
Who is the second big-box anchor? As of the most recent local reporting, it is still listed as an undecided, yet-to-be-announced retailer. What has been confirmed is Portillo's, which has moved from a preliminary application in early 2025 to formally submitted plans for a Littleton location.
If you are weighing a home near this corridor against one somewhere else in Littleton, the honest answer is that both choices are reasonable. The point of understanding how this deal was built is that it lets you ask sharper questions, about traffic, about the apartment lease-up next door, about which parts of this project the city is financially invested in and which parts it is not, before you write an offer instead of after.
If you want to talk through what this corridor might mean for a specific street or listing, Melinda Sanders can walk you through it with the same level of detail, using current data on the neighborhoods you are actually considering.
