CANTON TOWNSHIP, MI-Scratch one big box store. Ikea says it has dropped plans to develop a store in metropolitan Detroit because of a parking dispute with a neighboring land owner, the Swedish retailer says.
Last year, Ikea signed a purchase agreement for a 21-acre site in the township now occupied by a vacant Super Kmart. Ikea had planned to demolish that store and replace it with a two-story, 306,000-sf Ikea with more than 1,100 parking spaces.
An Ikea spokesman says LBS Partners LLC, which owns the property next to the proposed store, raised its asking price for a parking agreement on the property, prompting Ikea to cancel the entire development plan. Daniel Stern of West Bloomfield-based LBS says, however, that his firm "certainly didn't raise the amount of the agreement at the last minute."
The township store was to open in 2006. It was expected to employ 300 people and accommodate more than two million shoppers each year.
Ikea did say, however, that it is not completely abandoning plans for a Detroit-area store, but the company does not have a site selected. Ikea's plans to build a store in Troy were derailed in 2000 when that community objected to the retailer's signature blue and yellow exteriors.
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