"Even a retailer as large as Ikea doesn't make a retail hub," Leslie Mader, a retail specialist at Chicago-based Northern Realty Group, tells GlobeSt.Retail. "But once you get a big, solid anchor like Ikea, it's a hub in the making."

The Bolingbrook Ikea, which will be 310,000 sf with parking for 1,300 cars off Interstate-355, is slated for completion in time for the 2005 Christmas shopping season. It's the signature store in the two-phase development. Phase I will include about 136,000 sf retail besides Ikea, "home décor and hard goods tenants," according to Cleveland-based Forest City. Phase II, a 633,000-sf "lifestyle marketplace" at I-355 south of Boughton Road, will include a department store, according to the developer, with completion planned for the spring of 2006.

"It will be a large, regional retail destination, once the north and south portions are linked, creating a center of town and a sense of place," says Brian Ratner, president, East Coast development, Forest City.

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