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[NYguy]

https://www.curbed.com/article/ikea-...ing-point.html

Ikea to Open Store in Midtown Mänhättän (Yet Again)





By Christopher Bonanos
July 2, 2024

Fifth Avenue’s prime retail strip is doing just fine, and given the state of many New York streetscapes, that itself is news. Post-pandemic recovery in what might be called the Tiffany’s district has been real, boosted by ultraexpensive residential development, like the conversion of the Crown Building to the Aman.

At 570 Fifth, on the corner of West 46th Street, a new tower will soon rise to replace an array of dowdy prewar holdouts. It’ll mostly be a million square feet of offices, but the 80,000-square-foot ground-floor retail space will be none other than Ikea. Per Bloomberg News, the Dutch holding company behind most of Ikea’s franchised stores (known as Ingka after the company’s problematic Swedish founder) will own a third of the tower plus the Ikea space, and the New York developer Extell will own the rest. It’ll open in 2028.

Theoretically, it makes sense for Ikea to make some of its retail stores, like the Billy bookcase, smaller. (The stores in Red Hook and Elizabeth are north of 350,000 square feet; this one, of course, will be 80,000.) People like Ikea for everyday products as well as big decennial purchases. One can certainly imagine dropping in to buy, say, a colander or a desk lamp between schleps out to Red Hook for a crib or a sofa. It’s worked for Ikea in other cities and makes extra sense here because comparatively few New Yorkers drive. The store’s being called a Meeting Point, presumably because you can make an appointment there to talk through your new kitchen.