There is no doubt in the developers’ minds that Gig Harbor is a prime location for a new Costco. The question is where.

Gig Harbor North, which houses Target and Home Depot, is eyed as a potential home for the wholesaler. The problem is that two developers are hoping to land proposals for separate sites, each fighting an uphill battle with zoning codes to accommodate those proposals.

Olympic Property Group has been pushing for about three years for a complex that would include a Costco, a YMCA and a housing development on its 320-acre property. SHDP Associates, which brought Target and Home Depot to Gig Harbor in the first place, joined the race about a year later, proposing to build a store and senior housing on a 50-acre parcel.

The two proposed locations are literally across the street from each other.

Neither one allows the type of commercial use the two developers are after. “All the commercial zone has been taken up,” said Gig Harbor’s Community Development Director John Vodopich.

For months, a tug of war between the two competitors and the city has been brewing up, with SHDP and OPG trying to change the city’s comprehensive plan and increase the commercial use. The city’s planning commission recently recommended to “keep status quo” and deny both proposals, and the matter is now in city council’s hands, to be decided at the end of July.

“We are both in front of City Council, competing for the ability to get this commercial land,” said OPG’s Jon Rose. “The competition has made it more challenging.”

When YMCA scouted Gig Harbor for a new location, it appeared to settle for OPG’s proposal that includes a “community campus” with recreational amenities. But to bring the Y in, Rose says, commercial development is necessary to pay for infrastructure—like a water tank holding more than 1 million gallons of water and new roads.

“Without commercial use, the ability to have the Y is jeopardized,” Rose said.

Not that Gig Harbor couldn’t use more parks and recreational space, or the estimated $500,000 to $750,000 in sales tax revenue from Costco. But there is a catch. While both developers say Costco is very much interested in their proposals, no official application from the retailer has been received by the city. The company is presumably waiting on the sidelines to see who wins.

If the city were to approve one or even both proposals, there is no guarantee that Costco will come after all.

“…If the change is implemented, at the end of the day it could be anybody,” Vodopich said. Anybody could include giant retailers like Wal-Mart—which was once sent packing by residents several years ago, after it proposed an outlet in the city’s West Side.

After the battle against Wal-Mart, Gig Harborites appear more tolerant of big-box retail, and Gig Harbor North had been praised as an example of sensitive development that shows growth and aesthetics can be achieved through good planning. But no matter how appealing a Costco sounds, the question remains just how much commercial development the city wants.

Meanwhile, Costco is also rumored to be eyeing a potential site adjacent to the property Wal-Mart purchased for expansion on Bethel Rd. in Port Orchard. Clouding any potential construction there however, is the issue of the Bethel Corridor Design Standards, which all but prohibit any typical big-box retail.

For the past decade Kitsap County has used zoning issues to roadblock commercial development at Sedgwick and Sidney Roads, where most of the Gig Harbor North retailers — including Costco — originally agreed to build. When the retailers tired of Kitsap’s zoning hassles and went to Gig Harbor North, it put more than a million dollars a year in sales tax revenue in Pierce County’s pocket from South Kitsap residents who no longer had to travel to Silverdale to shop.

In spite of the fact that infrastructure is in place, it complies with the Growth Management Act, and the City of Port orchard is willing to provide services, much of the Sedgwick-Sidney area still faces bureaucratic opposition to commercial zoning — including two large chunks of land up for site-specific rezones in this year’s Kitsap County Comprehensive Plan.