iKea is needed!

[jaxphotocat]

Enough said.   All this land in North Florida and not one iKea, so I gotta drive to Orlando?

[billy]

where do want to put it?
where could you put it?

whatare the cit impediments?

[Ocklawaha]

Somewhere on a Trolley Car route? Hee Hee

Why not make a floating Ikea? We could set it up on that surplus aircraft carrier.

Downtown of course! It would work for me.

But Town Center "area"

Avenues "area"

Orange Park Mall "area"

even

World of Golf Village "area"

Would probably work for IKEA...

The amazing thing is, we have gotten four posts deep in this thread without some nut jumping on and saying something like "My trailer house has Colonial Furniture, quality made American colonial furniture from Taiwan, we don't need no Ikea store!" or the classic Jacksonville Yuppie with "You simply must understand Ikea's marketing model, only tier one cities will have a store, we can use catalogs, besides Orlando isn't that far away..." I just came to me that civic pride and competition died off with baseball. There was a time when on any given night Jacksonville might have played Cleveland or Baltimore, followed by Palatka and Waycross! Today our panties are too small to play Cleveland or Baltimore and we only meet with Palatka or Waycross folks in the truck stop restrooms.

WE NEED IKEA!

Ocklawaha

[thelakelander]

To be honest, we probably could not support an IKEA.  Other than New Haven, CT (which is perfectly set up to pull from several New England cities), all of the current IKEAs are located in larger metropolitan areas.

[thelakelander]

That was before IKEA broke ground on stores in Tampa and Orlando.  With a new store only two hours away, the demographics may have changed.

[Coolyfett]

That store aint all that....its ok... I never heard of them til I moved here. I don't see why they couldn't be in Jax.

[thelakelander]

Why didn't they come if the demographics were right?

[blizz01]

Please help me understand what makes IKEA so great besides the witty ad campaigns & commercials.  When I was a young boy I lived in Germany & remember a disproportionate amount of Americans shopping there & Germans joking that we flocked to "Euro-Junk".  In fact, now that I'm a big boy, I recently ordered an easel for my daughter & parts came missing with a nightmare customer service experience..........Maybe I should pop in again when I pass through ORL for another chance.  Ha HA -Oh yeah, my first experience with "Pee-Pee Balls" (like the jumpy balls that used to be in Chuck-E-Cheese & McDonald's) was at IKEA - circa 1983.  That's where my parents stuck me while they shopped for Euro-Junk!

[thelakelander]

Probably the same thing that makes many believe Macy's is great.  Its a store locals covet thats not here.

[Coolyfett]

What would actually keep that IKEA chain from setting up in Jax? Out of curiosity why not??

[thelakelander]

I'm confused.  Why would a local retailer be needed?  Why would we be held to a different standard than what took place in Tampa, Orlando or Sunrise?  Are we talking about public incentives as a definition of "cash reserve"?

[thelakelander]

Providing incentives (cash reserve) and having to have a local retailer (steinmarts) element as a part of the equation caught me off guard because the other Florida cities have no local retail presence.  Tampa had Maas Brothers at one point, but they went out of business back in the early 90s.

Couldnt put the necessary combination of local retailer (steinmarts) footprint, and cash reserve together.

[Ocklawaha]

Don't worry Jacksonville, we'll still get the jobs out of this that Orlando and Tampa will never see:

Containers of Euro-Junk into our port
Trainloads of Euro-Junk out of our terminals
Truckloads of Euro-Junk on our freeways
all operated by local boys...

PLUS!

We make the cool roller ball pens they sell
The Paint they push
and the deco-trash cans they dump

it's just a shame that all that Jacksonville blood sweat and tears and we'll never be able to buy our own Euro-Junk in a local Euro-Junk Super Store! All of these MUCH BIGGER METROS are stealing our dollars!
 

select a store


AZ, Tempe

CA, Burbank

CA, Carson

CA, Costa Mesa

CA, Covina

CA, East Palo Alto

CA, Emeryville

CA, San Diego

CA, West Sacramento

CT, New Haven

FL, Orlando

FL, Sunrise

GA, Atlanta

IL, Bolingbrook

IL, Schaumburg

MA, Stoughton

MD, Baltimore

MD, College Park

MI, Canton

MN, Twin Cities

NJ, Elizabeth

NJ, Paramus

NY, Long Island

OH, West Chester

OR, Portland

PA, Conshohocken

PA, Pittsburgh

PA, South Philadelphia

TX, Frisco

TX, Round Rock

TX, Houston

UT, Draper

VA, Woodbridge

WA, Seattle



Find the closest IKEA store to you

Coming Soon

FL, Tampa

NC, Charlotte

NY, 



Ocklawaha

[I-10east]

I see a trend; Jax gets an upscale store/restaurant (like at SJTC's phase two) that creates a splash for about a week, then it's forgotten about; Lack of upscale store complaints will persist while totally taking for granted the upscale stores that we already have like if we lived in Starke or something. New upscale store + Jax = Amnesia, and whiny complaints one day later of why we don't have the "next big thing" i.e. overrated upscale store like IKEA.     

[Charles Hunter]

Without digging out the atlas (or Googlemaps), I would guess that many of those "small cities" are suburb or satellite cities to bigger metropolises (metropoli?). Like if a store were located in Orange Park, FL.