The news of a new warehouse-style “Costco Business Center” opening in East Gwillimbury—a store accessible to individuals with a two-tiered membership—is met by some with a sense of local pride. Richmond Hill, like many modern North American towns, already hosts quite a few of these colossal retailers, be they Costco, Sam’s Club, or others. They stand as monuments to the pervasive economic philosophy of “buy in bulk and save.” But when viewed through the lens of cost/benefit analysis for the community, this development is less a boon and more a symptom of a deeply flawed, financially unsustainable urban model.
The Unseen Cost of “Affordability”
The core promise of the bulk retailer—affordability—comes with a stark and often hidden cost: waste. The entire business model is predicated on the idea that buying more than you currently need saves money. However, this pressure on consumers to purchase massive, family-sized quantities often leads to the inevitable: food expiring before it can be consumed.
Consider the difference between the bulk model and the traditional pattern of shopping for daily consumption. In a human-scale, walkable community, a resident might stop at a local grocer to buy ingredients specifically for that evening’s dinner. They purchase exactly what is needed, ensuring freshness and virtually zero waste. In contrast, the big-box model requires a dedicated car trip, incentivizing shoppers to “stock up” to make the travel time worth it. They leave with perishable goods in quantities that defy reasonable household consumption.
This waste is not just an individual failure; it is a systemic flaw. Grocers must stock mountains of produce to maintain the appearance of abundance, leading to massive inventory loss when goods don’t move fast enough. This cycle of waste, from farm to grocer to landfill, adds friction and inefficiency to the entire food system. Ultimately, it contributes to the rising cost of food—an affordability crisis these very stores claim to solve. This is particularly jarring when juxtaposed with the reality of local food banks struggling to meet demand. We are effectively throwing food away in one corner of the city while hunger persists in another.
The Employment Trap: Replacing Careers with Gigs
Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the big-box proliferation is its impact on the local labor market, particularly for youth. There is often praise for the number of jobs a new center creates, but we rarely analyze the quality of those jobs or what they replaced.
For decades, the aggressive expansion of big-box retailers has systematically dismantled the ecosystem of small, independent businesses. The local hardware store, the family-owned grocer, and the independent distinct retailer have largely vanished, unable to compete with the sheer scale of the giants. Consequently, these warehouses have become the primary—and often only—option for young people entering the workforce.
The tragedy lies in the nature of the work. A job at a local, independent business often functioned as an informal apprenticeship. A youth working at a local shop might learn the nuances of inventory management from the owner, specific trade skills, or the art of personalized customer relations. They learned how a business actually runs.
In contrast, big-box roles are designed to be highly standardized, unskilled, and easily replaceable. The worker is often just a cog in a massive corporate machine, tasked with scanning items or moving pallets, with little opportunity for mentorship or skill acquisition. We are funneling our youth into “plug-and-play” roles that offer a paycheck but fail to provide the career-building experiences necessary for long-term professional growth. The created wealth of the community is not being used to train the next generation of entrepreneurs; it is being used to subsidize a low-skill workforce while the real profits are siphoned off to corporate headquarters abroad.
Financial Fragility
Finally, we must ask: how profitable are these stores for the city? While they generate sales tax, their sprawling, single-story footprints and massive parking lots offer a pitiful return on land investment compared to traditional, mixed-use development. They consume vast amounts of space and demand expensive infrastructure—roads, sewers, and traffic signals—that the city must maintain forever.
This financial fragility is compounded when the retailer inevitably decides to move on. Once the corporation has squeezed all the available market growth and wealth out of an area, or if a more profitable location opens nearby, they close the store. The result is a massive, purpose-built structure surrounded by acres of asphalt left as a local blight point. These “ghost boxes” are extraordinarily difficult for the city to repurpose. Their vast size, specialized low-ceiling architecture, and distance from pedestrian areas make them unsuitable for smaller businesses, residential conversion, or even municipal use. The city is left with the liability of the abandoned land and the ongoing cost of maintaining the surrounding infrastructure, years after the retailer has stopped contributing meaningful taxes.
By celebrating the arrival of another big-box store, we are choosing an illusion of convenience over genuine, long-term financial health. A truly strong town builds wealth locally, nurtures small businesses that train the next generation, and minimizes waste by encouraging buying what we need, not what fits on a pallet.