Biggest Box Store Ever

[bruce_oneal]

So back to the original post.  Where is this new Home Depot suppose to go?

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there's a new one going up on the beltway at (bellaire? bissonnet maybe?) ... could that be it? it doesn't look super huge, so not sure.

[Trophy Property]

I saw they're building at the infamous old K-Mart location at Dunvale and Westheimer.  I wonder if that's it?

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I am not sure that tract of land is large enought for the biggest box ever.

Concerning the Home Depot being built on the West Belt, wasn't that completed a few years ago. I must be thinking of a differnt location?

[tw2ntyse7en]

...

[houstonsemipro]

Dude, throw in MUD taxes and livining in the city of Houston is a bargain, tax wise.

Most people leave the city for better schools.

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Is this old or new?

[houstonsemipro]

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Ikea gets ready for huge expansion

300,000-square-foot store to add 150 employees

By DAVID KAPLAN, Houston Chronicle

At a time when many retailers are scaling back, Ikea Houston broke ground Tuesday on an estimated $55 million project that will create one of the city's largest retail spaces.

Scheduled to open in early August of next year, the 300,000-square-foot store will enable Ikea to showcase the entire range of its home furnishings for the first time and make aisles less crowded.

The new parking lot will have more than three times the current number of spaces, said Ikea Houston franchise owner and manager Harald Witt, noting that insufficient parking space has been a big problem.

The current store will be demolished one month before the new one opens. Ikea will have to close for a month to allow time to tear down the original store, since it will be less than six feet from the new structure.

The new store will require an additional 150 employees, bringing the total to 350.

The number of checkout lanes will double, and a more ambitious restaurant will seat 300 people.

The 300,000-square-foot space will make Ikea one of the largest retail buildings in the city, said real estate developer Ed Wulfe of Wulfe & Co.

Foley's Sharpstown, Houston's largest Foley's by square footage, has 367,000 square feet, Foley's spokeswoman Priscilla Thorne Tinsley said.

Ikea is on the Katy Freeway about a mile west of Loop 610. The new Houston store was designed by Hermes Architects. Like the current structure, it will be two stories tall and sport a blue and yellow exterior.

The major expansion decision "was based on our needs, not the economy," Witt said.

One reason Ikea is not publicly held, Witt said, is "we don't want to be pushed by short-term profitability. When we go in, we do it for the long term."

Jerry Epperson, a furniture industry analyst and columnist with the trade publication Furniture Today, is not surprised.

The Houston store is one of 18 Ikea stores in the United States. It has 185 worldwide.

"Almost everywhere they've got stores, they're expanding because they can't meet the demand in their old format stores," Epperson said. He predicted that in the United States, Ikea will be more successful in the next 10 years than it was the last 10.

One reason he is bullish on Ikea's future is that over the next decade the 74 million to 78 million members of Generation Y, Americans now aged 7 to 25, will be looking to furnish college dorms, apartments and first homes, and Ikea is "perfectly positioned for them," Epperson said.

Along with home furnishings, Ikea offers a wide array of practical, affordable and multifunctional furniture suitable for relatively small living spaces.

The Houston expansion project has been challenging. Ikea expanded its property to 17 acres by purchasing 5.5 acres from adjacent Helfman Dodge and won permission to close a city road, Afton Street.

Initially some Afton Village residents expressed opposition to the closing. The Afton VillageHomeowners Association held a referendum in which a majority of the residents approved the closure. Ikea has agreed to build a $500,000 sound wall for the neighborhood.

Carolina Witt, Ikea Houston's manager of furniture and marketing and daughter of Harald, is project leader for the new store.

Along with negotiations with Afton Village, she said, the company held internal debates on issues such as: Should the company build a multilevel parking or an underground garage, like many other Ikeas have done, or design a huge street-level lot?

They decided to go with street-level parking, she said, because it will create nicer site lines for the store and be more pleasing to nearby residents. An underground garage was nixed because of flooding concerns.

The current facility was built by Stor, an American-owned Scandinavian-style furniture chain Ikea bought in 1992.

The Houston Ikea will not be the chain's largest. An Ikea in Chicago has 375,000 square feet, and a Stockholm store, styled after the Guggenheim Museum, is almost 600,000 square feet.

Visit their website at IKEA

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Is this old or new?

[bruce_oneal]

Theres already one on the west belt south feeder @ Bellaire. Just south of there, but before Beechnut (I think) they are building a new Walmart.

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sorry ... brain freeze. yes, they are building a walmart there.

[Trophy Property]

Is this old or new?

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That article was old. The new Ikea is opened and ready to sell the world crappy furniture. Just kidding !! Ikea has some cool stuff.