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Tampa, Florida -- For the first time since construction began on the massive new IKEA store in Ybor City, managers are allowing a look inside.
10 Connects was the first to get a tour of the gigantic blue-and-yellow building on Wednesday morning. It's still a construction site, with walls enclosing the vast spaces that will become different areas of the store by the time the company starts to stock its nearly 10,000 home decor products.
The store, which is slated to open in Summer 2009, is going up on a 29-acre plot of land at Adamo Drive and 22nd Street, just north of the Selmon Crosstown Expressway.
Oh boy, it's big
At 350,000 square feet, the new IKEA building is big enough to construct two Wal-Mart Supercenters inside it. If you'd rather go the grocery route, you could build eight to ten Publix supermarkets instead. You can't blame this Swedish company for making its stores big -- the Swedish word for "big" is "stor".
To get into the store at the moment, you trek from the paved 1,700-space parking lot, across the still-dirt driveway, and into the entrance, which is open to the elements except for a handful of columns. Broad glass windows will be installed later.
When the store's finished, you'll immediately catch an escalator to the upstairs showroom. For now, though, you'll have to hoof it up traditional stairs, since the escalator equipment hasn't arrived.
Upstairs, workers are moving materials around the open space of the showroom, where customers will follow a winding path past 50 completely furnished rooms, scribbling down the stock numbers and names of the furniture pieces they like.
The downstairs marketplace, where customers will grab a cart and buy accessories, is as open and empty as the showroom above it. Without any merchandise, shelving, or walls, the scale of the place is all the more impressive. Rows of columns visibly shrink as they run off into the distance toward the back wall.
At the back of the marketplace, you step through a doorway into the self-serve warehouse, a truly enormous enclosed space.
In one area, workers on towering lifts fiddle with skylights and fluorescent bulbs overhead. In another place, a forklift driver scoops up a large piece of air conditioning equipment and heads off toward a corner. A few people are on their knees, working on the several-foot-thick concrete floor. The floor crew is in a roped-off area the size of a basketball court, which -- thanks to the scale of the place -- feels like it's just a few feet across.
It'll be more than a "store"
Like other IKEAs, the Tampa store will have a 350-seat restaurant, which serves Swedish and American food. The view from the restaurant, above the entrance, looks out toward the Tampa skyline and the overpasses of the expressway.
A supervised children's play area called "Smaland" will be designed to feel like a Swedish forest. You got to trust the planners, though. Right now, it's just barely a room, enclosed by steel beams. Where kids will eventually laugh and climb, orange sparks fly from a whirring circular saw.
The Tampa store will be IKEA's largest in Florida. IKEA stores in Orlando and Sunrise, near Miami, are already open.
What's Swedish for "Help Wanted"?
As it opens, the store's expected to hire on around 400 "coworkers" -- the term the company uses for its employees. The jobs will range across the retail spectrum -- from sales to security and plenty of other fields -- including around 60 positions in the store's food section.
Because of its Swedish heritage, IKEA takes a generous approach to benefits, similar to other European companies, spokesman Joseph Roth said. Employees who work just 20 hours a week are eligible for full benefits like 401(k) matching and paid vacation, Roth said.
The company's taking applications now on their website.
Check out the video from inside the store on our news partner's website 10 Connects.com .
