(KTVI) – We’ve heard the rumors before, but now there are more rumblings about an IKEA store coming to the St. Louis area.
According to Nextstl.com, several sources say the Swedish-based chain furniture store will open a store in St. Louis near the Saint Louis University campus. Late last year, IKEA announced it was building a store in the Kansas City area. That store is scheduled to open by the end of 2014.
According to Nextstl.com, the store would be located on Forest Park Avenue between Sarah and Vandeventer. IKEA already has 38 stores in the U.S.
In September, Joseph Roth, an IKEA spokesman told FOX 2 News, “We have not committed to a timeframe for opening a store in the St. Louis area.”
Roth said IKEA knows it has a devoted fan base in St. Louis, but they chose Kansas City to help ‘balance their expansion’ among key regions of the country.
For what it`s worth, from downtown St. Louis, it is 269 miles to the IKEA store in Bolingbrook, Illinois, and 257 miles to Merriam, Kansas.
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An IKEA spokesman says the company is flattered there is so much interest from St. Louis, but officially there are no plans for a store here. Though he confirms the company is using a real estate developer to scout out possible sites.
Late Monday afternoon FOX 2 talked to Laclede Gas, the owner of a good chunk of the land that would have to be acquired for this development.
Laclede says it has talked with Cortex, a research partnership with Washington University and a number of other entities about a master redevelopment plan for this land. But there have been no specifics on what that would include.
