CARY
Sweden-based furniture company IKEA’s plan to put a store in this community received a warm welcome from the Cary Town Council on Thursday night, with its unanimous vote to move the project forward.
Most council members said they are pleased the corporation has been willing to make design concessions to fit in with Cary’s standards. Widespread community support for the popular store – the second in North Carolina – and its potential to revitalize a struggling Cary Towne Center were also reasons they cited.
“I think it’s the most beautiful blue and yellow building I’ve ever seen,” said Councilman Don Frantz, referring to the stores’ exterior color scheme. “I’m excited. The community is excited.”
Councilwoman Jennifer Robinson said she voted in favor of the rezoning request reluctantly. She said the company should make greater concessions to promoting a pedestrian-friendly project that fits in with the mixed-use goals of the town in that area.
“I’m not an overall fan of this project,” Robinson said. “... I hope I’m wrong; I want it to be a success.”
Councilman Ed Yerha said an opportunity like this one is rare, and that it will go a long way toward rejuvenating the mall.
The vote was on a request to rezone about 20 acres in the 38-year-old Cary Towne Center to accommodate the project. The town’s planning board has unanimously recommended approving the request, but some residents who live nearby the site have expressed concerns.
Here are the details:
▪ The IKEA development would replace the vacant Sears and Macy’s stores in the mall with a 380,000-square-foot, two-story building and two-deck parking area. That would represent an increase of more than half of the current commercial floor space.
▪ To satisfy neighbors who have been concerned about noise and lighting, current plans call for maintaining a dense buffer and berm between the store and the Ivy Meadows subdivision and allowing surface parking only. The height of parking lot lights has been lowered from the initial plan.
▪ A new traffic signal would be installed at Cary Towne Boulevard and Convention Drive, and several intersection improvements could be made.
How soon customers can shop there depends on how the plan progresses through additional approvals. IKEA has projected opening in the summer of 2020, following demolition next year and groundbreaking the year after that.
Craig Jarvis: 919-829-4576, @CraigJ_NandO
This story was originally published October 26, 2017 8:21 PM.