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Ikea Commits to Portland

PORTLAND, OR-Following a year of negotiation, the well-known home furnishings retailer announces its intention to anchor Cascade Station.

By Brian K. Miller | Updated on October 20, 2005

PORTLAND, OR-The Sweden-based home furnishings retailer Ikea will anchor Cascade Station, a 120-acre swath of development-ready Port-owned land along the light rail line to Portland International Airport that has been primed for development since early 2001. The commitment comes after months of negotiations and is expected to kick start 2 million sf of mixed-use development in an area for which the necessary infrastructure–from utilities, tree-lined streets and light-rail stops to sidewalks, grassy knolls and benches–has been in place since the light rail line was completed more than four years ago.

In February, after the city and developers found out about Ikea’s interest in opening one of its 400,000-sf stores in Portland, the development plan for the area was quickly revised to correct a miscalculation regarding the retail component of the master-planned development. The original plan–for 400,000 sf of retail in buildings no larger than 60,000 sf–was not successful, they said, because it was essentially a neighborhood shopping center without a neighborhood due to its proximity to the airport.

The revised plan–which calls for 800,000 sf of retail including one retailer anchor with a 205,000-sf footprint (Ikea’s preferred footprint), another with a 185,000-sf footprint and a third with a 90,000-sf footprint–allows for the kind of destination retailers that should draw enough customers from the region to create a market for smaller retailers such as coffee shops bookstores and restaurants. That, in turn, should give companies a reason to relocate their employees to the area, sparking prelease commitments that the developers could then use to obtain construction financing for the project’s 1.15-million-sf office component.

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