Ikea Plans Utah Store

DRAPER, UT-Ikea is planning a 310,000-sf store here, its first in the state, about 20 miles south of Salt Lake City. The Swedish home furnishings retailer is in the works to start construction in the spring and open the store about a year later.

As it will in its other stores, Ikea will offer 10,000 items in the Utah location, as well as a 300-seat restaurant and an area dedicated to children’s home furnishings. Ikea will also sell 13 acres adjacent to its 22.5-acre site to complementary retailers and other uses.

Ikea also has stores planned in Brooklyn, NY; Canton, MI; Dublin, CA; Portland, OR; Round Rock, TX; Somerville, MA; and West Sacramento, CA. Company executives are planning three-to-five new US stores every year.

Ikea operates 227 stores in 33 countries, 26 of them in the US. This year the company opened its first unit in the Southeast, in Atlanta, as well as stores in Bolingbrook, IL; Frisco, TX; and Stoughton, MA.

The Ikea store is not the only recently announced large project on the outskirts of Salt Lake City. About 10 miles south of the Ikea site, Cleveland-based Forest City Enterprises plans to build the $180-million Terrace at Traverse Mountain, a one-million-sf center on which executives plan to break ground in early 2008, with opening in the spring of 2009.