HoustonChronicle.com - Ikea gets ready for huge expansion
As a former IKEA employee, having started there during the buildup here in Houston after the demise of California based impersonator STOR, this is rather surprising. I'd always known that our location was among the smaller ones. I'd been to some of the larger locations, Philly comes to mind, but creating a 300,000 sq. ft. store will dwarf the store I knew.
To further darken my day, the original building will be demolished. IKEA saw me through college and gave me a shot at retail management (granted, I've since rejected it like the plague) and some of the co-workers I worked alongside were the best coworkers I've ever had. As far as retail gigs go, this one was by far my most enjoyable. So seeing the old place go down (and yeah, I'll be there to see it happen) will be a little bit of a loss of sorts. The place still holds a lot of memories, good and bad. But it's from such memories that we become who we are at the present.
Ikea gets ready for huge expansion
300,000-square-foot store to add 150 employees
By DAVID KAPLAN
Copyright 2003 Houston Chronicle
At a time when many retailers are scaling back, Ikea Houston broke ground Tuesday on an estimated $55 million project that will create one of the city's largest retail spaces.
Scheduled to open in early August of next year, the 300,000-square-foot store will enable Ikea to showcase the entire range of its home furnishings for the first time and make aisles less crowded.
The new parking lot will have more than three times the current number of spaces, said Ikea Houston franchise owner and manager Harald Witt, noting that insufficient parking space has been a big problem.
The current store will be demolished one month before the new one opens. Ikea will have to close for a month to allow time to tear down the original store, since it will be less than six feet from the new structure.
The new store will require an additional 150 employees, bringing the total to 350.
The number of checkout lanes will double, and a more ambitious restaurant will seat 300 people.
The 300,000-square-foot space will make Ikea one of the largest retail buildings in the city, said real estate developer Ed Wulfe of Wulfe & Co.
Foley's Sharpstown, Houston's largest Foley's by square footage, has 367,000 square feet, Foley's spokeswoman Priscilla Thorne Tinsley said.
Ikea is on the Katy Freeway about a mile west of Loop 610. The new Houston store was designed by Hermes Architects. Like the current structure, it will be two stories tall and sport a blue and yellow exterior.
The major expansion decision "was based on our needs, not the economy," Witt said.
One reason Ikea is not publicly held, Witt said, is "we don't want to be pushed by short-term profitability. When we go in, we do it for the long term."
Jerry Epperson, a furniture industry analyst and columnist with the trade publication Furniture Today, is not surprised.
The Houston store is one of 18 Ikea stores in the United States. It has 185 worldwide.
"Almost everywhere they've got stores, they're expanding because they can't meet the demand in their old format stores," Epperson said. He predicted that in the United States, Ikea will be more successful in the next 10 years than it was the last 10.
One reason he is bullish on Ikea's future is that over the next decade the 74 million to 78 million members of Generation Y, Americans now aged 7 to 25, will be looking to furnish college dorms, apartments and first homes, and Ikea is "perfectly positioned for them," Epperson said.
Along with home furnishings, Ikea offers a wide array of practical, affordable and multifunctional furniture suitable for relatively small living spaces.
The Houston expansion project has been challenging. Ikea expanded its property to 17 acres by purchasing 5.5 acres from adjacent Helfman Dodge and won permission to close a city road, Afton Street.
Initially some Afton Village residents expressed opposition to the closing. The Afton VillageHomeowners Association held a referendum in which a majority of the residents approved the closure. Ikea has agreed to build a $500,000 sound wall for the neighborhood.
Carolina Witt, Ikea Houston's manager of furniture and marketing and daughter of Harald, is project leader for the new store.
Along with negotiations with Afton Village, she said, the company held internal debates on issues such as: Should the company build a multilevel parking or an underground garage, like many other Ikeas have done, or design a huge street-level lot?
They decided to go with street-level parking, she said, because it will create nicer site lines for the store and be more pleasing to nearby residents. An underground garage was nixed because of flooding concerns.
The current facility was built by Stor, an American-owned Scandinavian-style furniture chain Ikea bought in 1992.
The Houston Ikea will not be the chain's largest. An Ikea in Chicago has 375,000 square feet, and a Stockholm store, styled after the Guggenheim Museum, is almost 600,000 square feet.
At long last, what the internet was put on this planet to accomplish for mankind ... is now done!
I know, I know. I'm too much of a geek for my own good. But this just struck me as hilarious. It seems as if the music industry is even more short-sighted than previously thought. Looking at that page and the accompanying page shows just how poorly thought out the tax on recordable media and the definition of a "private copy" is. It seems that in Canada, a copy is legal if you copy music for yourself, but not if someone copies it then gives it to you. So if you look at the scheme of your average P2P network, you're the person who is going out there and copying the files (thus copying the music) for yourself. Thus, it's legal.
I tell you people, the RIAA really has no idea what it is doing. Attempting to regulate any sort of activity on the Internet is an exercise in futility. It's not like TV or Radio where the cost of equipment is prohibitive and you must acquire a license to broadcast. Any nutjob with a $500 computer and a net connection can roam willy-nilly about the network doing as they please. Thus the reason that Pete is justified in some of his paranoia. But attempting to police a worldwide network is pointless. There's no good way to do it unless the only access was via government servers, allowing government filtering. And I tell you that will not happen anytime soon. Fortunately, we don't live in China and don't have national filters on the content of the Internet.
Thank you, Canada, for giving me a laugh at the RIAA's expense
Well, congrats to the old man who is as salty as the sea, as this very blogging site has reached a one year anniversary. I have posted a couple of entertaining articles on my little subsection of GO.com, but thought that it would be fitting to put a little bit about the anniversary up here on the front page article. However, since I'm kind of a wacky humor writer for this site, why don't you people wrap your brains around this: the traditional gift for a first anniversary is paper.
Beverly Hillbillies Casino in the works
Road trip! I call shotgun. Literally...
First of all, how fitting is it that this puppy is being proposed for construction in an old Wal-Mart building. So now we not only have inbreeds dealing the cards, but their faces will be on the card backs? Will they have a teller window where you can mortage the family mutt? What kind of vittles will be on the buffet? And best of all, will they serve Granny's Elixer as a drink for patrons on the casino floor? All these questions must be answered.
Well people, I told you before that clowns were evil. But would any of you actually listen to me? Noooooooo! Here it is, undeniable proof that if you don't go along with the clown's little song and dance that he'll cut you! I'm just waiting for the day when some nutjob decides to do a copycat crime from the 1990 masterpiece Quick Change and holds up a bank wearing a clown costume. People, I beg of you, let us put these carriers of unspeakable evil to rest once and for all. If you see a clown, beat him. If you see a clown with a bunch of kids, lure the clown away using a bottle of liquor (trust me, after being around all those kids the clown will readily agree), then smash the liquor bottle over it's head. Clowns are evil!!!!
KTVU.com - News - Sequoia Crushes SUV In National Park
Interesting ... the trees are attacking now. Maybe God does hate SUVs.
</sarcasm>
UPDATE: If God does hate SUVs, then maybe this is part of the reason why. When will people learn that marriage is for cars with cheaply painted cans dragging behind it, not vile SUVs.
... ok, so maybe I was a little quick with the </sarcasm> tag earlier.
Oh me oh my, where to begin this little saga. Well, at the beginning, of course. First of all, Hard Rock Cafe. Between a too expensive, bland jerk chicken sandwich and a $5 Bud Light draft, I wasn't impressed. I vaguely remember going to Hard Rock Cafe a couple other times in my life, but it's not a 'must-see' experience.
With our stomachs full and our souls empty, my compadre and I stepped out of the HRC to be face to face with some of the more unique members of our society. You look at your typical Weird Al crowd, and you see people who don't get a lot of sun. You see people who don't get a lot of attention. You see people who just plain don't get a lot. But they're good people who have been shunned by society for various reasons (typically acne and a dorky laugh) who have one thing in common: they're weird. And so is Al, so in we go to the Verizon. Now, I could have sworn I had been in there before, but it was probably in a very inebriated state, so that doesn't count. The elder statesman informed me that it was once a real arena, and that they played hockey there. Nifty.
Anyway, on to the entertainment. Yeah right. That comic was just plain bad. When he started ragging on the Adkins Diet, I was quite tempted to just start heckling him and yelling at him to stop insulting the memory of the great Dr. Adkins and that his diet worked for me. Now THAT's comedy. But sadly, I opted not to get thrown out before seeing the weird one, so I just sat there in agony waiting for that comic to either leave the stage or die. Sadly, he didn't die. My kingdom for a loose bolt in a stage light.
After an inexcusably long intermission, Al finally arrived. And yes, I agree with Greggo that I just don't know a lot of the songs that he is parodying nowadays. But fortunately you don't have to. Poodle Hat is a more even mix than his past albums of parodys and original compositions, so it really doesn't matter if you're current on popular music. One thing I was impressed by was the opening polka medley, which consisted of about a dozen 'angry white boy' songs. The truly impressive thing was that, during Al's rendition, his pacing and tempo matched the words to the actual video which was playing on the screen behind him. There's just something surreal about Al's voice being played in synch with Fred Durst's picture.
Another impressive thing about this concert was the costuming. Several pieces came out of the Al archive, as well as some new costumes. The homage to Talking Heads' "Once in a Lifetime" during his performance of "Dog Eat Dog" was probably lost on a lot of the younguns, but was a hit with the older crew. Also out of the Al archive was the Keytar for accompanying "The Beverly Hillbillies" as well as the Michael Jackson ensemble (red leather zipper jacket, fat suit). Good stuff, I say. Good stuff.
One note that Greggo missed was when Al was performing "Melanie", he just got totally lost, skipped verses, and even acknowledged that the song was kind of a downer. It made Al seem all the more human, and it gave the audience (and the band) a good laugh.
Perhaps the most impressive part of the concert was the 20 or 30 minute mix of some of Al's greatest hits, where he just went from song to song, with a few changes of clothes thrown in during them. We're talking constant action here. This man must have the metabolism of a hummingbird, because he was running and spinning around like a crackhead drinking Jolt cola and eating Fun Dip. Was it a good concert? Oh yeah. Would I go again? You betcha. And you should go too!
Now see, I just started paying a little attention to this whole Presidential election thing, and I lean somewhat to the left. So I start looking at the Democrats who are running, and what have we got? There's Howard Dean, who scares the CRAP outta me. I'm serious, the man looks like The Joker when he smiles. Just dye his hair green and give him a purple suit, and he's there.
Then there's Joltin Joe, who looks too much like Senator Palpatine for my tastes. I'd be afraid that he's going to raise a clone army and try to invade Mexico or something. Plus he turns out to be the Sith Lord who turns into the Emperor. And I don't know about you, but I don't want my President to be able to shoot lightning bolts from his fingers!
There's no hope, I say!
As some of you may know, I am a bitter person. My job embitters me even moreso, as I have to deal with braindead jackoffs all day. So reading about other species finding good jobs while I sit here and pound away on this mindless contraption called a computer, it makes me want to cry. Or scream. So, join in with me, won't you? For today, I cry for California.