Ikea unveils massive Sydney store

Swedish furniture and homeware giant Ikea is set to announce plans to build its biggest store in the southern hemisphere in the Sydney suburb of Tempe.

The store, which is due to open in late 2011, will be built on the site of an old rubbish dump.

The 37,000 square-metre store will be the only one to include all 10,000 of Ikea’s products and will have a store-path (that’s retail-speak for Ikea’s famous one-way shopping aisle that snakes through its stores) measuring 2.5 kilometres.

Ikea’s country manager David Hood says the company’s network of smaller suburban Sydney stores, most of which were closed during the last decade, had not survived because of a lack of car parking. The new Tempe store will have space for 2000 vehicles.

Hood said that while it had not taken long to receive planning approval for the Tempe site, it had taken 10 years of discussions to purchase the property.

Premier Nathan Rees said the project would create 550 construction jobs, and 600 on-going jobs, and described the announcement as a vote of confidence in Sydney and NSW.

Construction is expected to start in August this year. Ikea expects three million people will visit the store each year.

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