IKEA store will be company’s largest

THE IKEA furniture and bedding store to be built alongside Harvey Norman in Springvale is set to become the company’s largest Australian store.
Greater Dandenong Council last week gave the go ahead for the development of an 82,000 square metre site at the corner of Springvale and Westall Roads in Springvale.
It is jointly owned by Harvey Norman and IKEA and will include a whopping 70,000 square metres of retail space.
Of that number, 32,000 will be an IKEA store, making it the largest IKEA in the country. Currently the company’s largest outlet is its flagship 29,200 square metre store in Brisbane.
IKEA this week said it hoped the new store would be open by late 2009.
Kent Nordin, the IKEA Australia’s CEO, said the company hoped the Springvale store would follow in the footsteps of its Richmond store.
“Our Richmond store has been performing strongly since it opened in March 2003 and we are very excited about the potential of a full size IKEA store in the Dandenong area,” he said.
“We have been furiously searching for a suitable site since closing our old, and far too small, store at Moorabbin two years ago.
“At this early stage, we are still determining the ideal store size, depth of range and the preliminary opening date for the Springvale store, but we are hoping to be up and running by late 2009.
“However, at a cost of around $150 million, the new store is likely to be our biggest, and most environmentally-friendly, yet.
“Our 29,200 square metre IKEA Logan store near Brisbane, which opened last December, has won several awards for conservation initiatives both for the construction and running of the store.”
Mr Nordin also confirmed that the new IKEA store in Melbourne would create more than 300 jobs in the Dandenong area.