Ikea prepares for grand opening
Ikea workers are busy readying the new Oak Creek site for a May 16 opening.
“Assembly required.”
That phrase goes not only for many of the Ikea products consumers buy and put together at home, but for the interior of the new Oak Creek store itself as employees prepare for a grand opening in about six weeks.
Just-hired workers are assembling furniture displays and sample room settings for the 293,000-square-foot Ikea on W. Drexel Ave. near I-94.
At the same time, crews quickly are adding home décor and accessories and stocking the approximately 10,000 products that will be sold there when the Swedish retailer opens May 16.
Store manager Samantha Gravina estimated Tuesday that the store is 75% to 80% complete.
“We will be ready to go on opening day,” she said.
The Ikea store will be Wisconsin’s first, and the 48th in the United States. It is expected to draw customers from throughout the state.
In addition to loads of assemble-ityourself furniture and other signature products, the Oak Creek Ikea will feature a supervised children’s play area, 50 room display settings with decorating ideas and a 300-seat restaurant serving Swedish meatballs with lingonberries, along with other fare.
At the children’s area, called Small Land, parents will be able to drop off their children (who must be potty trained) while they shop.
“It’s a secured play place,” Gravina said. “You basically check your child in. They get wristbands and tagged, and the parent will sign them in. The only person who can pick up the kids is the parent who signed them in.”
Among the room displays featured in the Oak Creek Ikea will be at least one showing a finished basement — a home improvement project more common in Wisconsin than many other markets. The display will show, for example, how to most efficiently use the space underneath the basement staircase.
The huge store features 38 aisles of self-service furniture that customers can purchase and assemble at home. The store has at least 10 new forklifts to restock shelves to customer-level overnight from towering warehouse racks.
For right-brained creative and subjective people for whom assembling furniture might be a monumental task, Ikea offers an app-based service in which certified assemblers will come to your home and put it together.
But it’s really not all that difficult, said Ashley Hanrahan, who was assembling some furnishings during Tuesday’s news media tour of the Oak Creek store.
“It’s something anyone can do. I had to learn. You have to pay really close attention to the details,” she said.
The store will employ about 300 people.
Like many Ikea stores, the Oak Creek location is outfitted with solar panels. They cover pretty much the whole roof of the one-level building.
The roof has 4,752 solar panels capable of producing about 2.1 million kilowatts of electricity annually for the store, which is about the amount that would be needed to light up 156 homes a year, said Latisha Bracy, an Ikea spokeswoman.
“It’s part of our sustainability initiative,” Bracy said. “We’ll also install electric vehicle charging stations out front in the parking lot.”
The parking lot has about 1,000 spaces, but the store is preparing to set up off-site parking and a shuttle service for the store’s first week in business if necessary.
Bracy said Ikea has been working with local police, the fire department, a consultant and the Wisconsin Department of Transportation on a plan to manage traffic around the 29-acre site.