MERRIAM, Kan. — What a waste of a good building.
Five years ago, developers built a $73 million shopping center in Merriam off I-35 and Johnson Drive, but the anchor tenant, Circuit City, went bankrupt and never moved in. The economy crashed, and the brand new strip mall just sat there, empty.
On Wednesday, it will be torn down in order for a brand new IKEA store to be built in its place.
IKEA is a very popular furniture retailer based out of Sweden. IKEA officials say more than 60,000 thousand Kansas City residents travel to Chicago, Denver, Dallas or Minneapolis to shop at their store.
The demand for their product is high in Kansas City, and IKEA loves the location in Merriam — right off the interstate, which allows for great visibility. They expect hundreds of thousands of shoppers from all across the Midwest to visit their Merriam location.
Beginning at 10:30 a.m. Wednesday, crews will begin dismantling the current store. IKEA is working with Habitat for Humanity and other charities to recycle and salvage as much of the material from the building as they can.
A few months later, they will begin construction on the new store, which will be six times bigger than the current one. It will be energy-efficient and it should be ready to open in the fall of 2014.
Merriam officials are excited to see the space finally go to good use, and the extra sales in tax dollars will give a huge boost to the local economy.
So why tear the building down? Why not just move into it? According to IKEA, they have a set blueprint for all of its 340 stores worldwide, and company officials say they need more space for its furniture than the current building allows. So for IKEA, building from scratch is what needs to happen.