 After
an extensive site selection process that included many cities around the
Valley, IKEA, the world’s leading home furnishings retailer, has located its
first southwestern destination at Emerald Center, located at I-10 and Warner
Road.
The store opened in November 2004. More than 50,000 visitors from throughout
the Southwest are expected to visit the store annually.
The 23-acre IKEA site provides a sales floor for a selection of the 12,000
products that IKEA manufactures, a restaurant featuring IKEA’s renowned
Swedish dishes, a supervised children’s play area, 50 different room
settings, five model homes, baby care rooms, 1,500 parking spaces, and a
children’s showroom. This is a 340,000 square foot store.
 IKEA employs more
than 70,000 people around the world. About 10,000 of them are located in
North America. Tempe added about 400 more workers to that figure.
Emerald Center provides more than 100 remaining acres of prime
freeway-frontage for development. More retail and commercial space and a
hotel site are planned. Office space exists, as does a state-of-the-art
fitness center. More than 170,000 vehicles pass the development daily on
I-10, the freeway that connects Tempe to Phoenix, Tucson, Flagstaff and
California.
“Is this heaven? No, it’s Tempe.”
--Don Henninger
Editor, The Business Journal
referring to the forthcoming Tempe IKEA store
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