259 replies to this topic

[todd]

what if we buy temporary swedish meatball production franchise rights from ikea.  open it in the old sears in a bit walmart doesn't need.  operate it with skip the dishes only using the back door so mike can't see them.  is todd in a 10-minute radius for delivery?

This post is a five minute radius from 420 so it all depends upon how fast you can don a scuba suit.

[Victoria Watcher]

Ikea Canada’s plan to transform its business model is not going to include opening a store in Victoria.

 

An Ikea Canada spokeswoman confirmed the company’s “global transformation” project that includes opening smaller, city-centre locations would not be on the cards for the Island.

 

 

https://www.timescol...land-1.24008763

[LJ]

 

[G-Man]

Well that is just because it wouldn't make sense with the giant regular one they are building.

[Victoria Watcher]

they should build a big floating ikea that visits coastal ports all around bc.

[Mike K.]

You can bet on an IKEA opening here at some point. I’m sure they keep telling us no just to get us to sit back down.

[Victoria Watcher]

A typical Ikea store comes with a sprawling parking lot—in Burbank, California, for example, the lot has room for 1,700 cars. But as the company works to shrink its carbon footprint, including the pollution from customers driving to suburban stores, it’s also rethinking parking. A new seven-store building that will house an Ikea store in central Vienna, now under construction, will have zero parking spaces.

 

“The whole building is geared towards pedestrians, subway and streetcar riders, and cyclists—there is no space for cars,” the company writes in German on a store website. The location is next to a tram stop and a three-minute walk from a subway station; like other parts of the city, it’s easily accessible by bike. Anything that customers can’t easily carry away will be delivered from a new logistics center farther away (and soon, as with other Ikea stores, those deliveries will happen via electric delivery vans). “Our concept is that parking spaces are not needed, because there are no products to buy that require a car,” the website says. The company’s stores in other large cities are beginning to take similar approaches; there’s a store in Manhattan that serves solely as a showroom.

 

https://www.fastcomp...utm_content=rss

 

The roof, which is open even at times Ikea is not, serves as a public park. The building is also surrounded by greenery as another part of its sustainability strategy. The “urban heat island” effect, the fact that cities covered in heat-absorbing concrete and asphalt tend to get hotter than the surrounding countryside, can be mitigated with plants; as Vienna deals with increasing heatwaves fueled by climate change, the city is now deliberately adding new parks and encouraging architects to incorporate cooling strategies. The Ikea building is designed with a nearly 15-foot setback on all sides to make room for balconies planted with large trees.

On all of the facades, plus the roof, there are a total of 160 trees. “That’s many more than would have been able to be planted on the site itself,” says Dunkl. 

 

 

 

we need to immediately dispatch lisa helps to vienna to investigate.

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 21 January 2020 - 08:43 AM.

[Nparker]

A local IKEA location just got (even) less likely: https://www.iheartra...tore-1.12576665

[Victoria Watcher]

amazon prime has an ikea documentary series. it’s not bad.

[Nparker]

Do they mention when Victoria will be getting an IKEA?

[Rob Randall]

^We will get one when the population merits it or plate tectonics makes Vancouver Island a suburb of Shanghai, whichever comes first.

[Victoria Watcher]

Getting a piece of IKEA furniture on Vancouver Island is an exercise in expedition and improvisation. Either the Island IKEA fan is voyaging to the Lower Mainland by ferry, or they’re drawing upon a small local cadre of IKEA hustlers, resellers and dealers. 

But it didn’t always have to be this way. For a brief and largely forgotten moment in the 1980s, Victoria was home to one of the first IKEA stores outside Europe. While the Swedish monolith is long gone from the Island, its brief flirtation with Victoria has arguably engendered one of the most committed communities of storeless IKEA-lovers in North America.

 

https://www.capitald...abc72-119762929

[johnk2]

Halifax had an IKEA many years ago, we shopped there in the late 70s/early 80s.

A metro of similar population to us,  a provincial capital, four universities and a naval presence with salt water on three sides.

IKEA closed it because there wasn't enough business.

[Mike K.]

Back then the population would have been around 200k, pretty small even with Moncton etc within a day’s drive.

On the Island the logical placement would be Nanaimo.

[Brantastic]

I would suspect that the difference is the proximity to a larger metro area with an IKEA. It's pretty common for Victoria or Nanaimo residents to hop on the ferry for a trip to IKEA. I can't imagine Halifax residents driving 10 hours one-way to Quebec City for an IKEA trip. So it's not just the metro population, but also the context of the city in relation to other cities that likely plays a role.

[Brantastic]

Nanaimo would be a pretty weird place for an IKEA considering the greater Nanaimo area is only about 1/4 the size of Halifax, which is by far the smallest metro area in Canada with an IKEA. I could see Kelowna getting one before Nanaimo.

[On the Level]

Nanaimo would be a pretty weird place for an IKEA considering the greater Nanaimo area is only about 1/4 the size of Halifax, which is by far the smallest metro area in Canada with an IKEA. I could see Kelowna getting one before Nanaimo.

 

Nanaimo has a lot of shopping it wouldn't have if it was catering to the local market.  It's close enough to Victoria and can also draw as far up as Campbell River.

 

Of course if you are biking there to get your next sofa....all bets are off.

[Mike K.]

It's called The Hub City because it's the fulfillment and industrial centre of the Island, and that's why Duke Point was built, to handle almost exclusively freight traffic to the Island.

 

The big big box stores tend open there first, or just there, like Cabela's most recently, Costco back in the 90s when they first came to the Island, then SuperStore, Jysk, etc.

[JanionGuy]

butt the question remains, would you wanna live there?

[AllseeingEye]

butt the question remains, would you wanna live there?

 

I lived there for a year from 2002-03 and it was perfectly fine; of course I was living in the nicer north/west end of town literally up the hill from Departure Bay and also literally over another hill from Hammond Bay, arguably the two nicest neighborhoods in town. Eight minute drive to work, half that to three major grocery stores. D/T or Harewood in those days were no great shakes but otherwise it was fine.

 

Really depends IMO where you're at and at what stage of your life, i.e. are you right out of university, mid-career or retired for example, and what interests you have, if any, particularly from a hobby/recreation/outdoors standpoint. If you have no hobbies and your idea of "camping" is a 5-star resort with maid service and foo-foo umbrella drinks served on the beach, and for "recreation" taking the Bentley for a spin to a Night at the Opera is simply a "must do", then no its probably not for you.