If you've driven the stretch of Nine Mile Road near Chemstrand lately, you've noticed the parking lot. What sat as a dead Kmart for years is now Pensacola's first Costco — and the traffic tells you people had been waiting for it.

Costco opened at 225 E. Nine Mile Road, on the corner of Chemstrand, on June 25, 2026. It's a 172,580-square-foot warehouse with a liquor store, a tire center, a freestanding gas station and 830 parking spaces. The company hired locally ahead of the opening, with most positions posted between $20 and $33 an hour.

It replaced a whole strip that had been dying for years — a Kmart closed long ago, and a Planet Fitness that relocated. AJ's Seafood and Grill and the Wells Fargo branch on either side stayed put, so Costco now sits between them.

This is the part worth paying attention to if you're thinking about the area.

Costco does not guess. Before a warehouse gets built, the company studies household income, population growth, drive times and how many people live within a set radius. A Costco going in is not a prediction that an area will grow. It's a conclusion that it already has.

Nine Mile Road runs straight through Beulah and out toward Cantonment — the part of Escambia County adding new construction faster than anywhere else in the area. Costco is the biggest project on that road, but it isn't the only one.

Chick-fil-A got county approval in August to leave its spot in front of Target and rebuild on the old Dodge's convenience store site — a 5,394-square-foot restaurant with a drive-through on nearly two acres. A freestanding bank has been proposed at Nine Mile and Milestone. Beulah Road finished resurfacing over the summer.

Here's the item with more long-term weight than any store.

The state has funded a new I-10 interchange just east of Beulah Road, along with widening a 3.1-mile stretch of I-10 to six lanes and extending SR 99. It was approved in the state budget as part of roughly $370 million across Escambia, Santa Rosa and Okaloosa counties, scheduled in the 2027–2031 work plan.

A new interstate exit is a different order of thing from a new store. Stores follow growth. Interchanges create it — they change who can reach a piece of land and how fast, and that shows up in property values long before it shows up in traffic.

If you're looking at land or a house anywhere near Beulah Road, that project is worth understanding before you buy.

Three honest things.

Convenience is now a real factor in that corridor. For years, the trade-off in Beulah and Cantonment was more house for your money in exchange for driving further for anything. That gap just got smaller.

Retail follows rooftops, and then more rooftops follow retail. A large anchor opens, smaller retail fills in around it, and the corridor becomes a destination rather than a drive-through. That's already underway on Nine Mile.

But traffic is the other side of it. A 172,000-square-foot warehouse with a gas station generates a lot of cars, and Nine Mile Road was already busy. If you're looking at a house near that stretch, drive it at 5:30 on a weekday before you decide. Not at eleven on a Sunday morning.

A new Costco doesn't automatically raise the value of your house. What it does is change the character of an area — and that cuts both ways depending on what you wanted from it.

If you moved to Beulah for space and quiet, more retail is not obviously a win. If you moved out there for value and were tired of driving thirty minutes for a Sunday errand, it's a straightforward improvement.

Worth knowing which of those you are before you buy on that side of town.

Photo: Costco, file photo.

Beyond Pensacola covers what's being built on the Gulf Coast and what it means if you're moving here. Free, every Friday.