Enough said. All this land in North Florida and not one iKea, so I gotta drive to Orlando?
where do want to put it?
where could you put it?
whatare the cit impediments?
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
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.
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.
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.
Why didn't they come if the demographics were right?
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! :D
Probably the same thing that makes many believe Macy's is great. Its a store locals covet thats not here.
What would actually keep that IKEA chain from setting up in Jax? Out of curiosity why not??
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"?
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.
QuoteCouldnt put the necessary combination of local retailer (steinmarts) footprint, and cash reserve together.
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 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.
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.
I'd be willing to bet Bass Pro Shops shows up first..........(not that it would be a bad thing).