UNIVERSITY CITY-AREA LOCATION WILL BE 1ST IN CAROLINAS
Contact:Joseph Roth 610-834-0180,x6500
CHARLOTTE, NC – IKEA, the world’s leading home furnishings retailer, today announced that its future Charlotte store will open at 9 a.m. on Wednesday, February 18, 2009. It will be the Swedish company’s 1st store and restaurant destination in the Carolinas, 5th in the Southeast, and 36th in the United States. Until the 356,000 square-foot IKEA Charlotte opens, customers can shop at stores in Atlanta, GA; and Woodbridge, VA; or at www.IKEA-USA.com. Other stores in the Southeast are located in Orlando, FL and Sunrise, FL, with a store opening Summer 2009 in Tampa, FL.
“We made excellent progress on construction in the summer and fall, so we are thrilled, yet confident, the remaining construction milestones and interior build-up process will be complete by February – much earlier than originally envisioned,” noted Richard Castanon, store manager of the future IKEA Charlotte. “Now our primary goal is hiring and training the nearly 400 local hires joining the IKEA family before we open.”
IKEA Charlotte will present 10,000 exclusively-designed items, 49 room settings, 3 model home interiors, a supervised children’s play area, and a 350-seat restaurant serving Swedish specialties such as meatballs with lingonberries or salmon plates, as well as American dishes. Family-friendly features include a ‘Children’s IKEA’ area in the showroom, baby care rooms, preferred parking and play areas in the store.
The 356,000-square-foot future IKEA Charlotte, with 1,600 parking spaces, will be built on 25 acres in the University City area, at the northeastern corner of I-85 and City Boulevard. After the store opens, Crescent Resources will develop the surrounding 175-acre mixed-use ‘Belgate’ development.
This new IKEA store created 500 construction jobs and, on February 18, it will welcome 400 new coworkers into the IKEA family of more than 11,000 coworkers across the U.S. and 120,000 globally. Although IKEA Charlotte is progressing through outfitting phases, prospective coworkers still can apply for diverse positions available in home furnishings sales, customer service, safety and security, cashiers, maintenance, goods flow, receiving, warehouse and stock replenishment. IKEA Charlotte also offers food service opportunities in its Restaurant, Swedish Foodmarket, Bistro and staff cafeteria.
There currently are more than 280 IKEA stores in 36 countries, including 35 in the U.S., where other new stores will open in: Centennial, CO; Somerville, MA; and Tampa, FL. Since its 1943 founding in Sweden, IKEA has offered a wide range of home furnishings and accessories of good design and function, at low prices so the majority of the people can afford them. IKEA has been ranked in FORTUNE’s annual “100 Best Companies to Work For” list (three years in a row), Working Mother magazine’s annual list of “100 Best Companies for Working Mothers” (four years in a row) and Training magazine’s annual “Top 100” ranking of companies that excel at human capital development (five years in a row). IKEA incorporates environmentally friendly and socially responsible efforts into day-to-day business, and continually supports initiatives that benefit causes such as children and the environment. For more information about IKEA, and about working at IKEA, please go to www.IKEA-USA.com.