How do you say “finally” in Swedish?
Ikea is planning to open its first store in Midtown Manhattan — and its second location in the Big Apple — on the heels of its promise to cut prices of its goods in the US.
The new affordable furniture and home goods haven — beloved by broke New Yorkers and beyond — will be spread across 80,000 square feet inside Midtown’s 570 Fifth Ave., a new retail and office tower being developed by Extell.
The new ground floor space, which is decidedly smaller than traditional, 300,000-square-foot Ikea stores will be ready for Ikea to move in by 2028.
It will feature a “customer meeting point” for those making larger purchases.
“This next phase of our investment and expansion in the U.S. signals our commitment to bring IKEA closer to people in city centers,” Javier Quiñones, Ikea US’s CEO & chief sustainability officer, said in a statement.
Extell leadership says the project has been in development for nearly two decades and will serve as the first office tower to start construction in New York City post-pandemic.
“While we are in the very early stages of planning for the IKEA location, we can promise to deliver an experience that is full of inspiration and designed to meet the home furnishing dreams of the many New Yorkers,” Quiñones added.
News of the new location was welcomed by shoppers at New York City’s sole Ikea store in Red Hook, which is so inconveniently located, that some customers must take a ferry to access it.
“The worst thing about this location is having to lug everything back,” said Chris Almanzar, 35, at the Brooklyn store Friday.
He took two trains and a bus to get to Ikea — an odyssey that took him about an hour.
“With a location in Manhattan, it would be easier to take an Uber with our furniture and way more affordable too,” he added.
The new store appears to be part of the $2.2 billion US expansion aimed to win over cash-strapped American consumers that store owner Ingka Group announced last year.
The expansion plans include eight big IKEA stores and nine smaller ones, plus upgrades to existing stores.
Tolga Öncü, Ingka Group’s head of retail, said last year that the brand would up its commitment to returning prices to inflation-adjusted pre-pandemic levels by 2025.
Jahmar Ortiz, who was shopping with Almanzar, noted how affordable Ikea already is.
“The prices now aren’t too bad. They’ve never been terrible,” he said.
This isn’t the first time Ikea has attempted to expand its footprint beyond Brooklyn: a 115,000-square-foot site in Queens opened in 2021, though it shuttered less than two years later.
Ikea representatives cited “the changing needs of our customers” as a reason for the closure at the time, according to TimeOut.
