4 ms·

But it also says they'll be extensions of existing Ikea stores. How many of those are in inner-city areas? The one in Minneapolis is in the suburb of Blooming

by mark-r 6y ago

But it also says they'll be extensions of existing Ikea stores. How many of those are in inner-city areas? The one in Minneapolis is in the suburb of Bloomington. It's also right across the street from the Mall of America, which will lead to an interesting competitive situation.

apcragg 6y ago
The one in Atlanta is next to Atlantic Station which is a large business and residential development with rapid bus transit. It is also near Georgia Tech and Midtown though to get to Midtown you have to cross the highway which is not bike/ped friendly.
cs702 6y ago
Yes. They don't go into a lot of detail, but I suspect they will look at all existing IKEA stores and selectively expand/convert some of them into mixed-use spaces. In particular, I can see them offering, say, 'satellite' office space and meeting rooms in certain suburbs near high-density areas -- for people that now want to work remotely but don't necessarily want to work from their own home every day.
alistairSH 6y ago
DC Metro has 2 Ikea stores. One in College Park (inner suburb on the MD side, just outside the Beltway). And one in Woodbridge (outer suburbs, a fair hike south in I-95 in VA). I've never visited the MD location. The VA location is in strip-mall hell. I have mixed feelings about mixed-use development. In theory, it's great - put shopping, dining, work, and homes in one place. Reduce driving, make walking/cycling possible, etc. My problem is the way the US approaches mixed-use continues to be at a "larger than human" scale. It's not organic - it ends up being super-blocks developed in one go by a faceless developer. The common spaces tend not to be used - they look good in architecture drawings, but don't work well in meat-space. And parking lots are still built, which creates a Potemkin Village effect (multi-story garage surrounded in fake building facades, etc).
- clairity 6y ago
  > "My problem is the way the US approaches mixed-use continues to be at a 'larger than human' scale." as much as i love mixed-use, this is a fair criticism. because of escalating land values (and regulatory costs/uncertainties) in cities, everyone wants to hit a home-run and plays it safe as a result by building hulking superblock developments. there are ways to make those developments human-scale, but that costs more throughout the development cycle, and developers don't see enough return for it, since the effects are long-term, and their financial horizons are shorter-term.
  - bobthepanda 6y ago
    The problem is that US zoning and finance has basically killed off the small upstart developer; think of the general concept of a house flipper, but instead of remodeling the interior they replace one home with two or three smaller homes on the same lot. This still happens on a smaller scale in older urban areas, simply because price per square foot in places like New York make it hard to assemble a full city block unless you have half a billion on hand, and even if you did land parcels don't become available all at once like that. This type of "missing middle" development still happens where I currently live in Seattle to a limited extent, but I would really like to see regulations limiting horizontal massing of individual buildings to prevent this problem.
  - CBLT 6y ago
    I'm not sure that's the problem. I stayed in a mixed-use development in Southern California and the people who lived there straight up didn't visit any of the commercial space. I don't think mixed-use really works on a local scale without the crossover. If the commercial space had even one store that people wanted, like a Trader Joes, it could have worked.
    - renewiltord 6y ago
      The Embarcadero Centre is mixed-use and pretty popular./
    - seanmcdirmid 6y ago
edaemon 6y ago
I'm probably just missing it, but where do you see that in the article? From my reading of it these new "malls" in the US are going to be in dense areas, separate from regular Ikea stores.
CPLX 6y ago
It does not say they will be extensions of existing IKEA stores.

by mark-r 6y ago

apcragg 6y ago

The one in Atlanta is next to Atlantic Station which is a large business and residential development with rapid bus transit. It is also near Georgia Tech and Midtown though to get to Midtown you have to cross the highway which is not bike/ped friendly.

cs702 6y ago

Yes. They don't go into a lot of detail, but I suspect they will look at all existing IKEA stores and selectively expand/convert some of them into mixed-use spaces. In particular, I can see them offering, say, 'satellite' office space and meeting rooms in certain suburbs near high-density areas -- for people that now want to work remotely but don't necessarily want to work from their own home every day.

alistairSH 6y ago

DC Metro has 2 Ikea stores. One in College Park (inner suburb on the MD side, just outside the Beltway). And one in Woodbridge (outer suburbs, a fair hike south in I-95 in VA). I've never visited the MD location. The VA location is in strip-mall hell. I have mixed feelings about mixed-use development. In theory, it's great - put shopping, dining, work, and homes in one place. Reduce driving, make walking/cycling possible, etc. My problem is the way the US approaches mixed-use continues to be at a "larger than human" scale. It's not organic - it ends up being super-blocks developed in one go by a faceless developer. The common spaces tend not to be used - they look good in architecture drawings, but don't work well in meat-space. And parking lots are still built, which creates a Potemkin Village effect (multi-story garage surrounded in fake building facades, etc).

clairity 6y ago
> "My problem is the way the US approaches mixed-use continues to be at a 'larger than human' scale." as much as i love mixed-use, this is a fair criticism. because of escalating land values (and regulatory costs/uncertainties) in cities, everyone wants to hit a home-run and plays it safe as a result by building hulking superblock developments. there are ways to make those developments human-scale, but that costs more throughout the development cycle, and developers don't see enough return for it, since the effects are long-term, and their financial horizons are shorter-term.
- bobthepanda 6y ago
  The problem is that US zoning and finance has basically killed off the small upstart developer; think of the general concept of a house flipper, but instead of remodeling the interior they replace one home with two or three smaller homes on the same lot. This still happens on a smaller scale in older urban areas, simply because price per square foot in places like New York make it hard to assemble a full city block unless you have half a billion on hand, and even if you did land parcels don't become available all at once like that. This type of "missing middle" development still happens where I currently live in Seattle to a limited extent, but I would really like to see regulations limiting horizontal massing of individual buildings to prevent this problem.
- CBLT 6y ago
  I'm not sure that's the problem. I stayed in a mixed-use development in Southern California and the people who lived there straight up didn't visit any of the commercial space. I don't think mixed-use really works on a local scale without the crossover. If the commercial space had even one store that people wanted, like a Trader Joes, it could have worked.
  - renewiltord 6y ago
    The Embarcadero Centre is mixed-use and pretty popular./
  - seanmcdirmid 6y ago

edaemon 6y ago

I'm probably just missing it, but where do you see that in the article? From my reading of it these new "malls" in the US are going to be in dense areas, separate from regular Ikea stores.

CPLX 6y ago

It does not say they will be extensions of existing IKEA stores.