It seemed like no was affected by the Government Shutdown in Fort Wayne as the grand opening of the local Costco occurred yesterday. The hype that came with the opening was absolutely ridiculous.
It all started with plans being announced early this year. With the it being so close to Raytheon, the traffic patterns had to be changed. The building came up quickly and the promotions came with it. They setup a sign up tent near the busy street across their parking lot and had employees waving at onlookers. Raytheon even had Costco and their fierce competitor, Sam's Club (less than two miles away), come visit the site into order to inform employees what each warehouse shopping experience had to offer (with free food!). People sure do like buying things in bulk.
The frenzy for Costco was so extensive that the night before the grand opening, they let pre-signed up members enter the warehouse without the opportunity to purchase anything... I really don't understand why anyone would do such a thing. As I was driving to work at 7 in the morning, I witnessed a line of about 30 people in front of Costco... It didn't open until 10am... This was simple incomprehensible to me unless there were special deals.
There is at least one hitch from all this commotion of Costco. That is people are not following the traffic patterns as planned. Let me try to explain: So you know how there are areas of grass that have walking paths made by people taking the shorter route? This is similar but cars. Here's the picture:
The red line are barriers in order to prevent a left turn into and out of point 3 which has increase my commute to work by a third. The barriers were also suppose to force customers heading east to go to point 2 to exit (instead of exiting at point 1). But since the closest exit from the parking lot is point 1, the majority of customers are using the exit at point 1 and making a U-turn at point 2. And you know how well drivers can make safe U-Turns...