London will be home to Ikea’s 15th full-sized store in Canada.
The iconic Swedish big-box retailer announced Thursday morning a full-sized store will open in London in 2019.
Word of the expansion comes a year after Ikea Canada opened a pick-up depot in the city at 3198 Wonderland Rd. S.
“This is great news for London. I think Londoners will be really excited about this. We’ve talked about this for decades, there have been rumours for years that maybe Ikea will come to London. Now I can say it absolutely is,” said Mayor Matt Brown.
The new store will be located at the intersection of Highway 401 and Wellington Road, in a new retail and commercial complex. Construction of the store will begin in late summer 2018 and will take roughly 14-16 months.
“We know our loyal customers in the London area and beyond have been passionate supporters of the Ikea brand,” said Ikea Canada president Marsha Smith in a release. “We look forward to welcoming many more customers to the new Ikea store when it opens in fall 2019.”
Ikea Canada says the new store will create 100-150 new jobs for London. The pick-up store on Wonderland Road will close once the new store opens at which time those employees will transfer to the new store.
“Our customers in London have always been great supporters of our brand. This is evident with the success here of our Pick-up and order point. We heard our customers say they wanted to interact with our brand in an even bigger way and we listened to them,” said Smith.
Brown says the new store will be a perfect fit in London.
“We know that Ikea has set aggressive growth plans right across the country, we also know that our region has about 2.5 million people in it. London and our CMA has about a half a million,” he said.
The new store, which will be 270,000 square feet, will feature a showroom, market hall, children’s play facility and a restaurant (including the iconic Swedish meatballs).
Ikea says it plans to make the store eco-friendly. The building will include a rooftop solar photovoltaic installation and waste management equipment will be installed to highlight recycling and divert as much garbage as possible from the landfill.
The company says they will conduct home visits during the planning and design process in order to best represent London and surrounding area customers.
The London expansion is part of a plan to double the number of stores Ikea has in Canada from 12 to 24. The new store in London follows Ikea’s store that opened in Halifax Sept. 27 and the planned expansion to Quebec City next summer.