Is Costco open yet? If you live in The Colony and have asked a neighbor that question in the last six months, you already know the answer changes depending on who you ask. Someone will swear they saw forklifts moving pallets. Someone else will tell you the opening got pushed again. Both of them are half right, and neither is checking the one source that actually has the date.
That confusion is the story. Grandscape has spent the past year opening things constantly, just not the things most people are waiting on. Five tenants moved in and started serving customers between February and June of this year. The two anchors residents have been asking about since 2025, Costco and White Castle, are still under construction, and both of their opening windows have already slipped once. Sorting the two categories tells you something useful: the small stuff at Grandscape opens close to schedule. The big stuff doesn't, and won't, until you see it confirmed by the company itself rather than a banner or a rumor.
The Five That Kept Their Word
Start with what's already running, because most of it opened quietly enough that you may have missed it.
The Rustic's summer 2026 target has already come and gone, and by its own timeline it's now running out of the old Lava Cantina space at 5805 Grandscape Blvd, bringing wood-grilled food and live Americana music five nights a week. It's the second Dallas-Fort Worth location for FreeRange Concepts, the group behind the original Uptown Dallas venue, and it kept the same stage-forward layout while changing everything else about the room.
TOCA Social opened its U.S. flagship in early March, a soccer-themed gameplay concept founded by former U.S. World Cup player Eddie Lewis, blending interactive matches with a full food and cocktail menu. Days later, on March 5, PopStroke unveiled The Surf Lounge, converting the former Fireside Surf space into a poolside social venue tied to PopStroke's two 18-hole putting courses next door.
Two smaller additions rounded out the same stretch: Gashapon BANDAI Official Shop, a capsule-toy store in The Homestead district stocked with collectibles from Dragon Ball, Sanrio, and One Piece, and Mavericks Dance Hall, a 21-and-up nightlife venue that opened in the same window.
All five of these share a trait that matters more than what they sell: they moved into existing buildings. Lava Cantina, Fireside Surf, and the retail shells in The Homestead were already built. The tenants swapped signage, redid interiors, and opened in a matter of months. That's the pattern behind the pattern.
The Two That Keep Moving the Goalposts
Now the part that actually explains the confusion in your group chat.
Costco's project at Grandscape has been public since September 16, 2025, when The Colony City Council approved a site plan for a 155,000-square-foot warehouse and fuel station on roughly 32 acres at Spring Creek Parkway and Grandscape Boulevard. Ground broke that December. Early planning conversations floated a spring or summer 2026 debut. That date came and went. As of Costco's own new-locations page, the confirmed opening month is October 2026, and the company has been actively hiring for the site ahead of that date.
White Castle's timeline moved in almost the same shape. The chain announced its first-ever Texas location at Grandscape in August 2025, with an initial target of summer 2026 and 80 to 100 new jobs. Construction on the 3,430-square-foot building near the intersection of Destination Drive and Grandscape Boulevard didn't start until April 2026. Officials including Mayor Richard Boyer joined the groundbreaking ceremony on June 2, where White Castle revised its own timeline publicly: late fall 2026, with roughly 70 jobs attached. "We know our residents have been waiting for this," Boyer said at the event.
Here's the sorted view, so the next time someone in your neighborhood asks, you have the actual answer instead of the rumor:
| Tenant | First public date | Current status (Sept 2026) |
|---|---|---|
| The Rustic | Announced Feb 2026 | Open, summer 2026 |
| TOCA Social | Announced Feb 2026 | Open, early March 2026 |
| PopStroke's Surf Lounge | Announced Feb 2026 | Open, March 5, 2026 |
| Gashapon BANDAI | Undated | Open |
| Mavericks Dance Hall | Undated | Open |
| Costco | Approved Sept 2025 | Under construction, targeting October 2026 |
| White Castle | Announced Aug 2025 | Under construction, targeting late fall 2026 |
Why the Gap Exists
The mechanism isn't mysterious once you see it laid out. Retrofitting an existing building, new paint, new kitchen equipment, new signage, takes a fraction of the time it takes to build one from dirt. Costco's project involves grading 32 acres, pouring a 155,000-square-foot slab, and installing a fuel station with its own permitting requirements. White Castle's build is smaller by comparison, but it's still a ground-up 3,430-square-foot structure with a double drive-through, and the state permit filing for the project puts the cost at roughly $2.1 million. Neither of those projects can compress into a single season the way a tenant improvement inside a former restaurant can.
That difference is also why the entertainment tenants have kept closer to their original announcement dates while the anchors have not. When a project depends on earthwork, utility tie-ins, and inspection cycles, the projected date is a placeholder until the concrete is actually poured. When it depends on a paint crew and a new menu, the placeholder and the reality tend to land closer together.
What's Locked In Regardless of Any of This
While Grandscape's retail calendar keeps moving, the city's own fall calendar hasn't budged, and it's worth putting on your actual calendar now.
- Citywide Fall Cleanup runs 8 a.m. to noon on Saturday, October 17, in the parking lot at Hawaiian Waters waterpark.
- The Colony Shoreline 5K and 8 Miler goes off at 7:30 a.m. on Saturday, October 24, along the Shoreline Trail, with proceeds supporting cancer research through UT Southwestern. The race has run since 2013.
- The American Heroes Car, Truck & Bike Show lands November 9, alongside the city's Salute to Veterans festival.
- Haunted Shadows Lake Trail returns for its seasonal run along Lewisville Lake, flashlight required.
None of these depend on a construction schedule slipping or a national chain's supply chain. They're run by the city and by a race organization that's been doing this for over a decade, which is a different kind of reliability than a press release projecting a store opening eighteen months out.
The Practical Takeaway
If you've been watching for Costco based on something you heard back in the spring, that date was never solid. The number that matters now is October 2026, and it comes straight from Costco's own site rather than a secondhand post. If you've been waiting on White Castle since last August's announcement, the number that matters is late fall 2026, confirmed at the company's own groundbreaking in June. Everything else you've heard about either project, especially anything predating this year, was a planning-phase guess that already got revised once.
Meanwhile, five places that didn't get nearly as much buzz are already open and worth an evening. That's usually how it goes at a district this size: the loudest announcements take the longest to deliver, and the quiet ones are already pouring drinks.
If you're weighing a move within The Colony or watching how a fast-changing corridor like Grandscape might shape values in the neighborhoods around it, that's exactly the kind of on-the-ground read the team at The Agency Frisco | Heather Stevens tracks across North Texas every day. Reach out when you're ready to talk specifics about this market.