GUILDERLAND — The Capital Region's first Costco wholesale warehouse club is being proposed for 16.5 acres of land at the Rapp Road entrance to Crossgates Mall off Western Avenue, according to a Guilderland town zoning official. The site would include a 158,000-square-foot store.

An application for a special use permit was filed Friday afternoon by a Crossgates LLC entity associated with Pyramid Companies, according to Jacqueline Coons, Guilderland's chief building and zoning inspector. The filing was first reported by WNYT.

Pyramid operates Crossgates Mall and Crossgates Commons. Crossgates and Pyramid officials didn't return a call for comment.

Costco is known for selling a wide range of goods at steeply discounted prices to its club members. The Issaquah, Wash.-based company has been looking for a site in the Capital Region for more than five years. "Costco is looking at the Albany market as a potential new market," a broker for the company told the Times Union in June 2015, after the company ruled out a site behind the Times Union's offices and printing facility because of traffic concerns. "Beyond that, it's our policy not to comment on any possible specific locations."

The Western Avenue site appears well-suited to a new Costco. Northwest Atlantic Partners, which identifies possible locations for Costco stores, says the optimal size for a new store is 16 acres, and that such a site would accommodate a 148,000-square-foot building with 850 parking spaces and room for a gas station.

Pyramid also proposes an apartment development just north of the site, at Gipp and Rapp roads. The 222 apartment and townhouse units would be contained in two two-story buildings and three five-story buildings.

Neighbors have raised concerns about increased traffic through the Rapp Road neighborhood, an historically African-American community that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The apartment project is already undergoing an environmental review, and the Costco project's impact will be included, said Guilderland Town Supervisor Peter Barber. Rapp Road runs roughly north-south along the western edge of Crossgates Mall, connecting Western Avenue on the south and Washington Avenue Extension on the north.

Barber said the town proposed dead-ending the road off Washington — but that road is in the neighboring city of Albany, which hasn't signed off on the project. If the road was cut, the town agreed to have a so-called "breakaway gate" that emergency vehicles could pass through to gain access to the entire length of Rapp Road.

Barber said Costco's project is proposed for the east side of Rapp Road, and likely result in any construction until sometime next year. He said calls he was receiving Monday afternoon ran heavily in favor of the new store.

This isn't the first warehouse club-type retailer at the Crossgates site. Sam's Club operated a warehouse store on the lower level of a two-story space at Crossgates Commons, on the other side of Washington Avenue Extension, while Walmart occupied the upper floor.

When Walmart officials decided in 2006 to close the Sam's Club and use the space to create a Walmart Supercenter that included a full grocery, the resulting store — with escalators designed to accommodate shopping carts — became Walmart's largest. The new two-level store opened in May 2008.

The closing of Sam's Club also may have opened the way for Costco more than a decade later.

Costco's closest location is in West Springfield, Mass., about 75 miles east of the Capital Region.