LONGMONT — The city of Longmont has confirmed that Sam’s Club is the “membership club warehouse” anchor at Village at the Peaks, the name for the redeveloped Twin Peaks Mall.

Longmont economic development director Brad Power confirmed the identity of the retailer Wednesday morning, which the mall’s owner, NewMark Merrill Mountain States, had previously declined to disclose.

“Everything that comes in our door … is subject to public inquiry,” Power said. “We decided as a team that if we were ever asked a direct question as to who that anchor retailer was, we would reveal it.”

Allen Ginsborg, managing director and principal of NewMark Merrill Mountain States, had said Tuesday that his company had signed an agreement with Sam’s that left it up to the retailer to decide when its name became public, which is why he had not disclosed the name.

Now, all three of Village at the Peaks’ main anchor tenants are known: Knoxville, Tenn.-based Regal Entertainment Group, which currently runs the United Artists theater in the mall, will be the operator of a new 12-screen movie theater; Austin, Texas-based Whole Foods Market will be the natural grocer that Ginsborg has said was high on Longmont residents’ wish list, second only behind a new movie theater; and Bentonville, Ark.-based Sam’s Club will be the operators of a 100,000-square-foot membership club warehouse store.

“It’s all good news, right?” Ginsborg said Wednesday. “We’ve got a project that’s real and we’ve got some of the best retailers in the world as part of it.”

He added that just as Longmont residents expressed a strong desire for a new movie theater and a natural grocer, a membership-style retailer such as Sam’s Club or Costco also figured high on people’s wish lists.

“When we pursue tenants we pursue everybody in the category,” Ginsborg said. “We may have preferences and we may have opinions, but at the end of the day the marketplace decides who locates at our site.”

Sam’s Club originally had been announced years ago as a neighboring tenant to Longmont’s second Walmart Supercenter, which was built in 2010 southeast of Colo. Highway 119 and County Line Road. At the time the Supercenter opened, parent company Wal-Mart said it was still planning to build the Sam’s Club, but in a “future phase.” But the city’s development services manager, Joni Marsh, said Wednesday that the company’s application on the southeast side of the city had expired, and she believed that parcel of land had been put up for sale.

Sam’s Clubs are in more than 600 locations and claim 47 million members in the United States and Puerto Rico, according to information posted on the company’s website. The site also said each store averages 175 employees.

The city is partnering on the $80 million mall redevelopment by contributing up to $27.5 million to the project that will repaid using tax increment financing. The redevelopment agreement required the developer to secure a “large-format general merchandise retailer” — Sam’s Club — that will occupy at least 100,000 square feet and is projected to generate at least $400 of taxable sales per square foot; a stadium-style movie theater — Regal — projected to generate at least $35 of taxable sales per square foot; and a natural grocer — Whole Foods — that will occupy at least 28,000 square feet and is projected to generate at least $540 of taxable sales per square foot.

The agreement calls for deconstruction of the existing mall and construction of Village at the Peaks to be under way by the end of this year, with 75 percent of the new center built and open for business by the holiday season in 2014.

Tony Kindelspire can be reached at 303-684-5291 or at tkindelspire@times-call.com.