IKEA may be coming to Merriam Village

[KCMax]

Looks like they will demolish Merriam Village for this:
KSHB: IKEA to build new store at site of vacant Johnson County strip mall

Oh noes! We'll lose another pop-up Halloween store location!

What a wonderful use of taxpayer money. An empty shopping center that will be destroyed just a few years after it opened.

[pharmd]

Opening Fall of 2014

Swedish furniture retailer IKEA will announce plans Thursday to build its first Kansas City-area store in Merriam, the company said in a release.

The popular store will open in the fall of 2014 in the vacant Merriam Village shopping center at Interstate 35 and Johnson Drive. The site is at 5030 Eby Ave., at the southeast corner of I-35 and Johnson.

A news conference is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. Thursday at the store site. Check back for more details.

[KCPowercat]

Awesome.

[GRID]

Great location. I don't get tearing down such a new development, but I guess there is not much to those strip malls.

Go KC! Odd that KC got one before St Louis, but I'm sure StL is not too far behind. KC has about 2.7 million people between KC/ST Joe/Lawrence and Topeka which is about the market size IKEA likes per store. So KC can easily support a store on its own and StL will get one too.

[chaglang]

Great location. I don't get tearing down such a new development, but I guess there is not much to those strip malls.

Go KC! Odd that KC got one before St Louis, but I'm sure StL is not too far behind. KC has about 2.7 million people between KC/ST Joe/Lawrence and Topeka which is about the market size IKEA likes per store. So KC can easily support a store on its own and StL will get one too.

I wonder if proximity was a factor. St. Louis is +/- 4 hours away from a store. KC is 8. Our location at the intersection of I-70 and I-35 probably helped too.

Like most other retailers, IKEA tracks the zip codes of their customers. Maybe there were a lot of KC area zips showing up in Mpls, Denver, or Chicago.

[GRID]

Great location. I don't get tearing down such a new development, but I guess there is not much to those strip malls.

Go KC! Odd that KC got one before St Louis, but I'm sure StL is not too far behind. KC has about 2.7 million people between KC/ST Joe/Lawrence and Topeka which is about the market size IKEA likes per store. So KC can easily support a store on its own and StL will get one too.

I wonder if proximity was a factor. St. Louis is +/- 4 hours away from a store. KC is 8.

Like most other retailers, IKEA tracks the zip codes of their customers. Maybe there were a lot of KC area zips showing up in Mpls, Denver, or Chicago.

I just think they found a location they liked and pounced. I really think IKEA considers the KC and StL markets as independent and that StL will still get a store soon, they are just looking for the right place. Both KC and StL are large enough regional markets to support independent IKEAs. StL will just have a wait a bit longer. It also might have some to do with distrubution issues. They need more stores in the middle of the country.

KC's store will serve the nearly 3 million people in the immediate region plus Omaha, Wichita etc and for the time being Columbia, Springfield and some in StL till StL gets a store.

Although this talk of it being KC's "first" store is kind of odd. KC will never get a second IKEA unless it adds 3-4 million more people.

[grovester]

That is a bummer about the tear down, as those spots would fill up pretty quickly now I'd think, but the remaining area didn't seem near big enough.

[pharmd]

From the press conference: The groundbreaking will be in summer of 2013

[chaglang]

From the press conference: The groundbreaking will be in summer of 2013

2012-13: Google Fiber installations
2013-14: Ikea
2015: streetcar construction

This is KC? Pinch me.

[smh]

From the press conference: The groundbreaking will be in summer of 2013

2012-13: Google Fiber installations
2013-14: Ikea
2015: streetcar construction

This is KC? Pinch me.

[NDTeve]

From the press conference: The groundbreaking will be in summer of 2013

2011: Trader Joes
2012-13: Google Fiber installations
2013-14: Ikea
2015: streetcar construction

This is KC? Pinch me.

fYP

[chaglang]

From the press conference: The groundbreaking will be in summer of 2013

2011: Trader Joes
2012-13: Google Fiber installations
2013-14: Ikea
2015: streetcar construction

This is KC? Pinch me.

fYP

[kcjak]

From the press conference: The groundbreaking will be in summer of 2013

2012-13: Google Fiber installations
2013-14: Ikea
2015: streetcar construction

This is KC? Pinch me.

Don't forget:
2011: Mayor Funkhouser voted out of office

[Cheffreygo]

Before we moved to Waldo we lived in Merriam. I think this will be an enormous boost to the area. Although I would have been excited if IKEA would have chosen somewhere in KC proper, the Merriam location is about the best I could have hoped for since most of their locations (by far) are suburban. At least Merriam is an older, inner-ring suburb. The location (to me) makes perfect sense -- 15 min or less from downtown, 15 min from Olathe, 20 min from Brookside/Waldo.

It's exciting to think about the draw that IKEAs have. My wife and I (and most of our friends) have made trips to suburbs of Chicago, Denver, or Minneapolis just to shop at IKEA and when we visit those suburbs we end up spending the majority of our time in the city's urban core -- add a night of hotel plus meals and we end up spending a significant amount in the city.

The overall impact is pretty staggering as we'll be the closest IKEA to St. Louis (2.8 mil metro population), Omaha (877k metro), Wichita (630k metro), Des Moines (569k metro), Northwest Arkansas (463k metro), Springfield (436k metro), Lincoln (302k metro) and Columbia (175k metro). Sure, all of those cities don't overwhelmingly match the IKEA demographic, but I don't doubt that we'll have a lot of visitors to the KC region simply because of IKEA's presence here.

I, for one, think that the choice of Merriam was one of the better case scenarios since it's not realistic for IKEA to choose a center-city location.

[kcjak]

One of the reports I read http://www.kshb.com/dpp/money/business_ ... strip-mall says covered parking will be available underneath the two-story store, in addition to 1,200 surface spots. Perhaps this will help spur additional urban development that incorporates parking structures instead of just surface parking.

[kcmetro]

See if you can spot mgsports' comment on the Star article.

[zonk]

Ha! That wasn't hard.

[pharmd]

All hail KCMax...who on 3/8/2012 called the greatest retail "get" in Kansas City area history since François Gesseau Chouteau opened his first trading post. You are all now welcome to "kiss his ring".

[chaglang]

All hail KCMax...who on 3/8/2012 called the greatest retail "get" in Kansas City area history since François Gesseau Chouteau opened his first trading post. You are all now welcome to "kiss his ring".

He called the winning site, and one of the others that Ikea considered (Crackerneck).

Among the locations pitched to IKEA besides Merriam were the Mall of the Great Plains in Olathe, The Falls in Independence development anchored by Bass Pro, and the former Bannister Mall site in south Kansas City.

[KCMax]