[MarkDaMan]

Portland's own big box development...anyone see that oppressive IKEA sign...imagine if it were WalMart :yuck:

anyway from the Daily Jounal of Commerce:

Myhre Group is designing a new Aloft hotel to be built at Cascade Station, near Portland International Airport.

The five-story, 68,000-square-foot hotel, when completed in December 2008, will be one of the first in Starwood Hotels and Resorts’ boutique Aloft line, part of W Hotels.

The design calls for wood on the ground level and stucco and metal paneling on the higher levels, all punched through with large windows. The rooftop curve is Starwood’s trademark “swoof,” which will be lit from below at night with more than 70 different colors. Rooms will be oversized and loft-like with nine-foot ceilings, and a pool, fitness center and bar will be included.

The Myhre Group design team includes Steve Pearson and Devin Follingstad.
http://www.djc-or.com/viewStory.cfm?recid=29047&userID=1

http://www.myhregroup.com/images/projects/AloftRender-Large.jpg

[pdxskyline]

It's about time that this development got off the ground! Haven't been up there for a while, but now there's a reason to.

[65MAX]

HUUUUGE Ikea sign, visible from space. Maybe they're using it as a backup for the traffic control tower?

Man, the city really caved in to them, didn't they? Of course, I love Ikea, so it's OK :tup:

[pdxman]

Cascade station took a hit, tho, when their other largest tenant Costco Home pulled out. Thats a big hole to fill. I hate it when that happens...

[360Rich]

z

[360Rich]

I hadn't heard -Rich

Costco pulls plans for store near Portland International Airport

Posted by Stephen Beaven February 26, 2007 11:27AM

A Costco Home store proposed for a retail development near Portland International Airport has been pulled off the table, a Costco spokesman said.

A local developer announced last April that Costco would open the third in its newest brand of home furnishing warehouses at the Cascade Station project near PDX. The store was to serve as a bookend, along with Ikea, for about 40 retailers.

The shopping center is scheduled to open this summer. But Costco won't be there.

"We are continuing to fine tune our Costco Home operation and therefore do not want to go forward with the third unit, which would have been at Cascade Station," the spokesman said.

In addition to Ikea, smaller stores and restaurants, the shopping center will be home to mass-market retailers, including Best Buy and Golfsmith.

http://blog.oregonlive.com/breakingnews/2007/02/costco_pulls_plans_for_store_n.html


Flickr picture of Cascade Station
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dieselboi/sets/72157594528521044/

[360Rich]

z

[MarkDaMan]

Somebody will no doubtly fill the space, I just hope its an iconic destination shopping store and not some Lowes or something.

[PacificNW]

A Cabela's would be cool.

[WonderlandPark]

A Cabela would be cool.

I never knew Cabela's had any desire to penetrate the West, they have always been a Midwest thing, but then I looked at their store map and saw Boise and the Seattle areas on there (coming soon).

[der Reisender]

Pray tell, what is Cabela's?

[PacificNW]

It is a huge sporting goods store.

"Hunting, Fishing & Outdoor Gear by The World's Foremost Outfitter."


http://www.cabelas.com

[WestCoast]

that Ikea sign is awful, what a gateway to our city if you fly into PDX. :(

Oh well

[WonderlandPark]

that Ikea sign is awful, what a gateway to our city if you fly into PDX. :(

Oh well

Don't worry, Ikea has been right next to the NJ Turnpike at the Newark airport, one of the first thing many people see coming to the NYC area for a decade or two now.

[PDX City-State]

My hopes are low. I admit liking Ikea, but big-box retail generally sucks. I will probably never go there.

[MarkDaMan]

It is a huge sporting goods store.

"Hunting, Fishing & Outdoor Gear by The World's Foremost Outfitter."

:yuck: we don't need to encourage more vancouverites to cross the bridge...

[Capitol Hill]

So after this thread, I looked at the website for Cascade Station. I was kind of surprised by the development. A lot of surface parking, it didn't seem to be the most efficient use of land, which I understand is becoming more and more scarce in Portland.

And, on the site plan, the project seemed quite linear, is the Ikea on the far right big box or the far left? Thanks.

[360Rich]

Ouch, no love for us Vancouver folk :(

PDX IKEA is starting to hire http://blog.oregonlive.com/breakingnews/2007/03/ikea_to_begin_hiring_employees.html

[MarkDaMan]

Capitol Hill, the area Cascade Station is building on is between the ends of two runways. Housing isn't permitted in the area and the land cannot be sold, just the development rights. Potential for the space is severly limited although the first plan had a more ambitious design, trying to build more of a 'lifestyle center' with offices and hotels as well as shops, but 9/11 changed that and the city became so obsessed with IKEA that they allowed the new developers to turn this into a relatively normal American sprawled big box development. There are longer range plans that office and hotels with underground garages will go up where much of the parking is, after the initial spaces for hotels and offices are filled, but we'll see.

oh, and IKEA is to the far right
http://marketing.trammellcrow.com/portland/cascadestation/siteplan.gif

[pdxman]

:yuck: we don't need to encourage more vancouverites to cross the bridge...
Or salemites to clog I5/205...

[Capitol Hill]

MarkDaMan, much appreciated. I thought that this sure didn't seem a very Portland project.

[Snowden352]

I think there's a little too much snobbery floating around here. Some of us don't mind big box retail (if it's in the right area).
'Course, some of us don't think Applebee's is a hideous restaurant (us poor unwashed working class folk).

[Capitol Hill]

My 'snobbery' has absolutely nothing to do with the tenants of the complex, but everything to do with the acres of parking. I was unaware of the constraints of this project when I proposed my questions. Linear projects such as this, similar to Parkway Plaza in Southcenter area of Seattle seem very inefficient to me. Most people who are visiting will drive from one end to the other instead of having a more compact building footprint with parking underneath or on the roof and walking from store to store. In that regards, it seems surprising.

[MarkDaMan]

I think there's a little too much snobbery floating around here. Some of us don't mind big box retail (if it's in the right area).
'Course, some of us don't think Applebee's is a hideous restaurant (us poor unwashed working class folk).

I'm 'working class' as well and I can't afford to only shop at the highest end retailers, but I think big box can be done to the local scale instead of a corporate imprint in every city in America, along with several other reason for opposing a development like this one and the corporate croonies they attract. Look, Freddies is like America's first big box and there is hardly opposition to new stores. However, freddies also pay's their employees, starting, at least $10.50 for most jobs and extends health care coverage. They also are 'gasp' involved in their communities, though their dedication to the communities they served seems to have decreased since being acquired by Kroger.

[edgepdx]

I don't see anything terribly wrong with Cascade Station. It will be nice to have an IKEA and if you have to put this kind of development somewhere, at the end of the runway is probably as good as you can get. Keep in mind it's also on a MAX stop which will reduce car trips and provide access for the car free, so it's not totally out of character for Portland.

[urbanlife]

I like the idea of having an IKEA in Portland...I also like the idea that it will be the IKEA for Oregon, unlike Walmart, who needs to build a billion of them in each state.

Plus on the positive side, without IKEA going in there, we would have nothing ever getting developed there. And if you ask me, I think that might be the best place for IKEA to go. Easy access by car or light rail. It is far enough from the city center to not take up high density land. Plus where it will sit, not like we would ever see any high density there, or any other kinds of development for that matter.


I think IKEA is making the best of an unwanted area in Portland.

[anp]

I'm not against having IKEA, but it would have been nice if they had placed the building adjacent to the street, with parking beside and behind, so MAX riders wouldn't have to hike through acres of parking to reach the building. The problem with this development generally is that there seems to be a huge swath of parking between buildings and the streets, making it pretty much a standard strip mall that happens to have a couple of MAX stations nearby.

[urbanlife]

I'm not against having IKEA, but it would have been nice if they had placed the building adjacent to the street, with parking beside and behind, so MAX riders wouldn't have to hike through acres of parking to reach the building. The problem with this development generally is that there seems to be a huge swath of parking between buildings and the streets, making it pretty much a standard strip mall that happens to have a couple of MAX stations nearby.

I agree with that, I thought it was odd too, that the entrance was so far away from the MAX stop.

[der Reisender]

^ yes! was there any reason to not just swap the layout for the IKEA property? seems like an easy call to put a door by the transit stop. people driving will be parking no matter what, its not like they will care

[mcbaby]

^ yes! was there any reason to not just swap the layout for the IKEA property? seems like an easy call to put a door by the transit stop. people driving will be parking no matter what, its not like they will care

who do we contact about these concerns?

[der Reisender]

we could tell potter about it and he could put together a committee for parking lot visioning to best determine where the city ought to go with future parking lots and building placement issues. it'd be solved in 4-6 years easy!

seriously, i don't know. sam adams i guess

[65MAX]

This same issue was raised earlier, before construction started. That was IKEA's decision, for better or worse. It's too late at this point to change that. Sam Adams wouldn't have any say in that. Maybe they can go back later and add some kind of pedestrian amenities to connect the entrance with MAX, if they don't already have something planned.

[tworivers]

The city was bending over backwards to attract Ikea to Cascade Station. For that reason, I doubt they had much much of an inclination to twist their arm about the transit connections.

From their job postings, it looks like they may be shooting for the store to be up and ready for employee training by May 14th. Maybe an early June opening?

[65MAX]

June opening? Just in time for the college graduates...

[edgepdx]

June opening? Just in time for the college graduates...

With this economy is it just in time for the graduates to get jobs there or buy there first furniture there :shrug:

[65MAX]

Both

[tworivers]

Man, don't f*ck with Randy, he'll bite your head off.

Giant IKEA sign prompts permit freeze

06:48 PM PDT on Monday, March 19, 2007

By VINCE PATTON for kgw.com

In an angry response to the giant size of a sign for Portland's new IKEA store, city commissioner Randy Lenoard has frozen all sign permits for the Cascade Station development district near Portland International Airport.

Leonard noticed the huge new sign while driving along I-205 recently. "I thought, where did that come from?" asks Leonard.

Portland city ordinances place severe restrictions on the height and size of commercial signs.

At 100 feet tall and nearly 2300 square feet, the IKEA sign eclipses all such regulations.

Bruce Allen, with the Portland Development Commission, says the sign was not exempted from the city's sign code because, "the city sign code was supplanted" by the creation of a special committee with its own rules to determine development decisions at Cascade Station.

Allen was one of three appointees to the committee that approved the oversized sign.

"Obviously IKEA stands out," says Allen. "It's part of their branding."

Commissioner Leonard says he's upset. "I think if you happen to be a large corporation with lot of attorneys and professional planners, that should not allow you to have a different set of rules than somebody who doesn't have those resources," says Leonard.

He concedes that developers are upset with his freeze on all new signs at Cascade Station until he gets answers to his questions.

"I think the law should apply fairly to everybody," says Leonard.

He doubts the IKEA sign will come down. But he wants to prevent any more like it.

[zilfondel]

lol

christ! well, I haven't seen the sign yet, so I'm not saying I disagree with him. But interesting... PDC exempted IKEA from the normal rules, eh?

[360Rich]

http://www.oregonlive.com/images/hp/332/ikea_sign.jpg

For Cascade Station, different rules, bigger signs
Billboards - Commissioner Randy Leonard asks the city attorney to investigate the legalities of Ikea's new sign
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
RANDY GRAGG
The Oregonian

The city of Portland has been to the Oregon Supreme Court and back fighting for its controversial size limits on billboards and commercial signs.

But it took only the prospect of the Swedish company Ikea coming to town to get the city to relax its rules.

The evidence now rises at Cascade Station, at the intersection of Northeast Airport Way and Interstate 205, in a new calling card that's four times higher and 10 times larger than any new sign allowed elsewhere in the city: 100 feet high with three panels that are each 13 feet by 52 feet.

"It's so big it has to have blinking lights so that a jet doesn't plow into it," says City Commissioner Randy Leonard, who oversees city signage but knew nothing of the sign until he drove past it.

"I'm not convinced this is legal," he added. "We have clear public policy. The sign code is rooted in land-use law. There are requirements for public hearings."

Since the early 1990s, Portland has limited new commercial signs to a height of 25 feet and an area of 200 square feet. And for most of that time, the city has fought AK Media and Clear Channel in court over the regulations.

In a Multnomah County courtroom Thursday, Clear Channel will make closing arguments in another attempt to force Portland to allow dozens of new billboards across the city.

But in 2003 as the city was fighting Clear Channel, Leonard says, then-Mayor Vera Katz set into motion a different set of sign rules for Ikea.

"She called people into a room and told them, 'I want this Ikea to happen, and I don't want anything to stop it.' "

Ikea doesn't see it that way.

"We came to the dance after the rules were made," said Joseph Roth, public affairs director for Ikea United States. "We made very clear what our store and signage requirements were. And we were told that they would be compatible with Cascade Station."

None of the other officials who negotiated the deal -- the Port of Portland, the Portland Development Commission or Katz -- could be reached for comment.

But the sign regulations governing the Cascade Station Development -- and Ikea -- are dramatically different from those that apply to the rest of the city.

The city's "Title 32" code outlines numerous sign requirements throughout the city, many of them specific to particular areas, from the so-called "Broadway Bright Lights District" to Old Town Chinatown. But at Cascade Station both signs and building designs are approved by a four-person committee created under a development agreement negotiated among the city, the Port and Cascade Station's main developer, Trammell Crow.

The city and the Port of Portland hatched Cascade Station in 1997 in a complicated deal in which international construction giant Bechtel Corp. received development rights to 120 acres of long-dormant Port land for constructing Airport MAX. The rail line opened in 2001, but development sputtered until Ikea signed on.

The store -- which sells everything from candlesticks to kit-of-part houses -- at 280,000 square feet is more than four times the size of Cascade Station's originally planned 65,000-square-foot limit on single stores.

"We want to make sure that we bring businesses to Portland that support good business practices, including family-wage jobs and benefits," Mayor Tom Potter said in 2005. "Ikea measures up on every count."

But Leonard, who locked horns with Katz over the city's restrictive sign code soon after his election in 2002, calls the Cascade Station's sign arrangement "a scheme not a process, negotiated with clear intent to get around city design-review procedures." And while he and the city attorney's office investigate its legalities, he has put a halt to any more sign permits in the district.

Leonard's move has stopped several signs, among them a 65-footer with five 90-square-foot panels advertising other new stores at Cascade Station. That's more than two times higher and larger than what's allowed elsewhere

"It's not that we necessarily disagree that signs should be smaller," says Fred Bruning of CenterCal Properties who submitted the permit. "But you can't unring a bell. We have signed leases based on certain signage."

City planner Joe Zehnder declined to comment on the legalities of the process given the city attorney's investigation. But he pointed out that the City Council passed the allowances for different design guidelines in 2000 -- long before Ikea began its negotiations with the city.

"All along," says Zehnder, "there was a sense of needing additional flexibility at Cascade Station because of the big risks and public benefits involved, like bringing light rail to the airport."

Randy Gragg: 503-221-8575; randygragg@news.oregonian.com

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/117439172439190.xml&coll=7

[Drmyeyes]

Yay Randy! At least somebody in city hall has got resolve, balls, whatever you want to call it. From what it says in the article, ikea probably has a strong legal case for their sign, but maybe the rest won't. To me, it seems ridiculous that a beacon store like ikea would need such an obnoxious sign to draw people. Ikea is such a phenomena that people would probably seek it out if it had no sign at all.

[NJD]

We should move that ultra-creepy bronze of Vera off the esplanade and on top of the IKEA sign

[MarkDaMan]

^I love that statue! First time I saw it was on a snow day and I was like 'hey that homeless person is covered in snow' but it was Vera. I'd be creeped out if it was in the corner of my bedroom though.

My problem with the city council is their tendency to focus on the past, instead of moving forward. If previous commitments were made, and even sealed in writing, than arguing about it years later, after the rules were relaxed, leaves the city open to lawsuits and possibly bad relations with the company the city is changing its commitments with.

I say sit down with Cascade Station developers and hammer out an acceptable agreement for all parties. If they wont agree to changes for signage and such, than honor the commitment and be smarter in the future. It's really bad business to change course mid way, after signed commitments are in place.

[pdxstreetcar]

For a company that prides themselves in design, you'd think they would have made the sign look a little better. There was a big controversy in New Haven a few years ago when Ikea bought some property to build a store and planned to tear down a Marcel Breuer building on the property to have a larger parking lot. They ended up tearing down part of it.

Disposable Architecture
Ignoring its Modernist lineage, Ikea seeks to dismantle a classic Marcel Breuer building.
http://www.metropolismag.com/html/content_0203/ob/ob05_0203.html

[CouvScott]

For a company that prides themselves in design, you'd think they would have made the sign look a little better.

Sorry, I put the sign together, but in my defense, their directions were confusing and I ended up with a lot of extra parts. ;)

[edgepdx]

I saw the sign today and I really didn't think it was that bad. It's big, but it's smaller than a lot of billboards around the area. It's just says IKEA, it's a lot better than a lot of those beer ad billboards you see around.

[WonderlandPark]

Typical Northwesterner over-reaction. Portland is a metro of well over 2 million people, put down the latte and the gore-tex and frigging get over it. You aren't in hippie tree hugging 1970 any more, grow up, you are a real metro area. You got bigger things to worry about than an ikea sign.

[tworivers]

Typical Northwesterner over-reaction. Portland is a metro of well over 2 million people, put down the latte and the gore-tex and frigging get over it. You aren't in hippie tree hugging 1970 any more, grow up, you are a real metro area.

That *ahem* might be a bit of an over-reaction on your part.

[pdxman]

Typical Northwesterner over-reaction. Portland is a metro of well over 2 million people, put down the latte and the gore-tex and frigging get over it. You aren't in hippie tree hugging 1970 any more, grow up, you are a real metro area. You got bigger things to worry about than an ikea sign.
True, very true...

[MarkDaMan]

Welcome to Portland?
BACKSTORY: Many eagerly have awaited Ikea, but some critics say any big-box store is a bad idea
By Jennifer Anderson
The Portland Tribune, Mar 27, 2007

Ikea, the Swedish furniture giant that’s attracted a cultlike following around the world for its cheap, sleek home furnishings, employs a host of sustainable business practices that any green Portlander would raise a glass to.

For example, the company – set to make its debut in Portland this summer at the Cascade Station development near the Portland International Airport – recently started a campaign to recycle light bulbs and began charging 59 cents for durable bags and a nickel for disposable plastic bags at the checkout counter.

With its generous benefits for part-timers, paid maternity and paternity leave, and other perks, it also is ranked among both Fortune and Working Mothers magazines’ top 100 companies to work for.

But in a land where people can’t seem to decide whether to protest or patronize corporations like Starbucks and Wal-Mart, and sometimes do both, it would be expected that Ikea’s impending move into Oregon territory would open a window – covered in affordably stylish curtains, to be sure – for some lively debate.

While there has been no organized opposition to the store locating here, there has been a growing amount of underground rumblings.

Citizens have weighed in on a host of complicated issues: the recent flap over the legality of Ikea’s larger-than-life sign, the use of taxpayer dollars to support this chain-store development, where the store will sit, the impact the site may have on locally owned businesses, and the ambivalent attitude city officials and residents have displayed toward big-box stores.

As one poster named “Marleen” phrased it on Portland’s Indymedia Web site: “Why is Portland simultaneously cheering IKEA and booing Wal-Mart? How Does Portland Spell Hypocrite? I K E A.”

Marleen echoes the thoughts of many locals who are strongly opposed to big-box stores for their impersonal nature, impact on traffic congestion and repercussions to locally owned businesses.

She also says they “place an emphasis on disposable possessions” and “take up large chunks of urban space.”

“Who cares if they shave off a bigger sliver of the spoils for their employees,” she wrote of Ikea. “IKEA is a suburban car-culture oriented business that just happens to appeal to the condo-set.”

Despite these sentiments expressed by a fragment of the community, most loyal Ikea shoppers aren’t paying attention to the politics surrounding the store at all, but are absolutely giddy for its arrival, visions of $299 dining sets and $349 sofa beds dancing in their heads.

To the uninitiated, walking through an Ikea store is more like exploring a small city in a mazelike fashion, where customers can toss bric-a-brac into their shopping carts and retrieve large items from shelves in a warehouse just before checking out. Most furniture items require assembly, one of the ways the company keeps prices down.

Besides being the only one of the 250 worldwide sites located within steps of a light-rail line, Portland’s Ikea will look exactly the same as all the others, store manager Ken Bodeen said during a recent site visit.

There’s a 250-seat restaurant that specializes in Swedish meatballs and other home-style fare, a supervised children’s play area and baby care rooms throughout the store.

There will be 50 room settings, three model homes and 10,000 products, and the store will employ about 400 people from the metro area. Recruiting begins in a few weeks.

The building sits at the eastern edge of Cascade Station, the 120-acre development along the airport light-rail line and bordered on the east by Interstate 205.

It’s set to open this summer, although no date has been announced. The building is 280,000 square feet, considerably smaller than the 350,000-square-feet store in Renton, Wash., which occupies an old Boeing hangar.

There will be 1,200 parking spaces and 75 bicycle racks, and the word is still out on how patrons might get their large items back to town via the MAX.

“I would love to see a furniture car,” Bodeen quipped while visiting the site one recent afternoon.

Barring that, customers may take advantage of the store’s delivery service, the rates for which currently are being set.

The building itself eventually will be painted blue and yellow, Sweden’s national colors. And rather than a ribbon-cutting ceremony, Ikea employs a log-sawing ritual, a Swedish practice meant to herald a new home.
Journey began 10 years ago

The story of how Portland’s Ikea came to be starts in 1997, when the city, Metro, TriMet, the Port of Portland and an entity called Cascade Station Development Co. – a partnership between two developers, Bechtel Corp. and Trammell Crowe Co. – hatched a plan for the airport light-rail line extension.

For $42 million, the development company and the Portland Development Commission secured development rights to 120 acres of the site with a 99-year lease.

In February 1999, the City Council adopted a plan for a mix of retail, offices, a hotel and entertainment at Cascade Station, specifically prohibiting big-box stores from locating there.

However, six years later – after the PDC spent $28.3 million on two airport MAX stops, a connecting overpass and a stretch of park blocks, utilities, streets and sidewalks – the site remained empty.

So in February 2005, city officials rewrote the plan and allowed big-box stores to develop there, desperately seeking an anchor for the site.

After several months of talks, Ikea announced on Oct. 20, 2005 , that it would locate here, signing a 99-year lease with the Port of Portland, which owns the land.

Dave Mazza, an activist who worked with labor groups to keep Wal-Mart out of Sellwood, has a problem with the city giving big-box stores special incentives.

“We should not be considering any sort of public subsidy to entice these types of businesses to locate in our communities,” he said. “They already have enough advantages without us throwing more taxpayer dollars at them.”

Bob Alexander, the PDC’s economic director, counters that charge: “There was no incentive to Ikea from us, nor the port, I believe – just like a regular real estate deal. Imagine that.”

Still, other critics believe Cascade Station has been a money pit of taxpayer dollars.

“I look at Cascade as somewhat of a misuse of urban renewal,” said Jerry Ward, a Southwest Portland resident who’s kept a close eye on the city’s handling of urban renewal areas.

“Because here you have road access, all the basic things were there next to an airport, why did the city put that in an urban renewal area?” he said. “It doesn’t make sense.”

Bruce Allen, senior development manager for the PDC, explains why it was created: “We saw this as one of the areas we could actually focus on another aspect of our economy in Portland, industrial development,” he said. “It was already an emerging development but had the potential of thousands of acres of farmland that the city deemed appropriate for development.”

Steve Schopp, a longtime urban renewal critic, highlights the city’s treatment of Ikea, compared to Wal-Mart. “Funny how a big-box moratorium was needed for Hayden Island recently, but we’re supposed to believe the same politicians who say Cascade Station is a success now that Ikea is coming?” he said.

He’s referring to the resolution Commissioner Sam Adams – the council’s most vocal opponent of Wal-Mart – created last year when Wal-Mart set its sights on opening a Hayden Island location.

Adams explained his actions on his own blog: “I voted for big boxes at Portland’s Cascade Station development near the airport. It was developed with the proper infrastructure as well as a transportation plan that includes light rail and a street grid to handle the trip generation at this location. Unfortunately, Hayden Island lacks such an adequate plan.”
Sign draws Leonard’s ire

Cascade Station is still largely empty, beyond the construction crews at the Ikea site and the other large concrete box for what would have been a Costco Home store at the opposite end of the site.

That company pulled out of the development but still may decide to locate there, Allen said. He declined to disclose any other retailers, but there has been talk of a Best Buy and Sports Authority moving in.

The goal is for 30 to 40 retail shops and restaurants to open this fall. There also will be at least three business hotels and a large office building on the site.

One of the hotels will be aLoft, a new brand that caters to business travelers and is part of the W Hotel chain, according to Steve Wells, Trammell Crowe’s managing director.

Wells said the contracts for the two other hotels are close to being signed, and construction also will begin on a 100,000-square-foot office building this summer.

Until those structures are built, the most recognizable thing at Cascade Station is Ikea’s 100-foot sign painted in its signature blue and yellow, which Commissioner Randy Leonard called attention to recently after driving by.

As the enforcer of the city’s sign code, he became angry when he said he learned that Ikea received an exemption from the city’s sign code years ago when the city was trying to lure the store to Portland.

Leonard doesn’t think that was right, and called for a freeze on permits for all other signs at Cascade Station.

Wells said no wrong was done. “I think the signs are legal and we’ll work it out,” he said. “We don’t agree with Commissioner Leonard’s position at all. It was put in under a building department-issued permit.”

Bodeen, the store manager, is aware of the politics being raised but is staying out of the fray, saying the issues predated the store being here.

“I get so excited when I talk about Ikea,” he said. “Portlanders are very savvy about home furnishings. … We’re excited to bring affordable, well-designed home furnishings to the Portland area. We’re excited to be a catalyst for economic development here.”

jenniferanderson@portlandtribune.com

Map of Cascade Station
Where's Ikea?

• Of the 25 largest metropolitan areas in the U.S., Portland (No. 24 in 2005 U.S. Census estimates) is one of seven with no Ikea. By next summer, only four metro areas in the top 25 will be without an Ikea: St. Louis; Tampa, Fla.; Denver; and Cleveland.

• Only two Ikea stores currently are located in cities smaller than Portland: New Haven, Conn., and Austin, Texas. Within a year, stores also will open in the smaller cities of Cincinnati; Orlando, Fla.; and Salt Lake City.

• Forbes’ 2007 list of the world’s billionaires lists Ikea’s founder, Swedish-born Ingvar Kamprad, at No. 4, with a net worth of $33 billion.
http://www.portlandtribune.com/news/story.php?story_id=117494591988872800

[PacificNW]

Hotel breaks ground near Ikea
Portland Business Journal - 12:27 PM PDT Tuesday, June 26, 2007

One of the first ever "aloft" brand hotels in the United States is being built adjacent the new Ikea store in Portland's Cascade Station.

Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide, along with Pollin Hotels III LLC, broke ground on the 136-room hotel Tuesday morning and plan to open next summer.


The aloft concept was developed by the creators of the luxury brand W hotels. Promoters cast aloft Portland as a "sassy, refreshing oasis."

Cascade Station, near Portland International Airport, is a mixed-use commercial development that will contain hotels, retail, office and restaurant space. Ikea opens next month. Other tenants include Best Buy and Sports Authority.

[PacificNW]

http://www.portlandtribune.com/features/story.php?story_id=118272158299957700

Countdown to Ikea: Assembly will be required
In the Ikea universe, design is for everyone and Portland is ripe for the picking
By Joseph Gallivan
The Portland Tribune, Jun 26, 2007


L.E. BASKOW / PORTLAND TRIBUNE



One door opens and another one closes; reasons to go to Seattle come and go. The Emerald City gets a sculpture park and a revamped art museum, and we all hit Interstate 5 north. But Portlanders are getting their own Ikea on July 25 and no longer have to schlep to Renton, Wash., to furnish their home on the cheap.

Ikea is a Swedish furniture and housewares store founded in 1943 by 17-year-old Ingvar Kamprad of the village of Elmtaryd, Agunnaryd (the store’s name is an acronym). While the business began as one man peddling fish, vegetable seeds and magazines by bicycle, it grew into a mail-order catalog, a showroom and eventually an international retailer beloved by students and first-time homeowners.

From the publicity machine’s junk statistics (“Ikea served 15 million Swedish meatballs in the U.S. last year”) to the inevitable consumers who camp out to be first through the doors, the opening of a new Ikea store unfolds with the predictability of a flat-pack bookcase.

On a recent tour with the Portland manager, Ken Bodeen, all the plus points were being talked up. The canteen where staff can get a $3 lunch. The 90 bicycle racks. The lockers and the showers (they seem to expect many of the 350 new workers to arrive by bike).

Bodeen grew up near Hermiston but just transferred here from the Burbank, Calif., store.

Out on the sales floor, staff are busy assembling the show furniture. Cynthia Griner, who will eventually work in customer service and returns, is putting together a bed. Griner, who has already done dozens of wardrobes, recommends that self-assemblers follow the stick-drawing instructions to a T.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself. Don’t go, ‘Oh, it must go there,’ then find out later it doesn’t.”

Portland is the 31st store in the United States, and the 256th in 35 countries worldwide. At 280,000 square feet it’s a pipsqueak compared with the blue and yellow behemoth — 440,000 square feet — at Schaumburg, Ill., just outside the city of broad shoulders and broader behinds.

The stores all carry the same 10,000 items.

“What’s selling in Portland is the same as in London, Stockholm, Moscow and Beijing,” Bodeen says.

Parts are made all over the world. “With the Poäng armchair, the seat cushion is made in China and the frame in Sweden,” he says. “The parts don’t meet until the customer pulls them from the shelves.”

The same seductive power that made Ikea a source of malaise for the protagonist of the 1996 novel “Fight Club” is clearly a source of pleasure for millions of shoppers.

The stores inspire a culture, as shown on blogs from the fawning Positive Fanatics to the ingenious Ikea Hacker . The latter records, for example, how one father chopped up a bunk bed and added a firefighter pole.


‘How do you say no?’
Swedish design is a big part of the attraction. Some is simple wooden furniture (two pine chairs and a table, $90). Some is gaily colored or sleekly modern, the antidote to the dark wood and oxblood leather that dominates cheap American furniture stores.

Then there is the reassuring feeling a consumer gets seeing something as simple as a ceramic coffee mug improved. The Trofé (50 cents) has a notch that prevents water from pooling around the base after the dishwasher is done.

“It’s style and function that people want,” spokesman Joseph Roth says on the same tour. “People go, ‘I never thought of getting a whisk that’s flat,’ until they see one. For $2, how do you say no?”

Saying that Ikea aims somewhere between the bookshelves-on-milk-crates kids and people who want a Barcelona chair is not completely meaningless: Ikea’s niche is a weird and rare intersection of price and design. In other words, champagne on a beer budget, and you don’t get much more Portland than that.

More to it than marketing
If anyone in Portland knows about design and furniture it’s Bill Fritts, owner of Intelligent Design at 537 S.W. 12th Ave. He sells mainly office furniture but keeps an eye on the residential market.

“I know a lot of people who can’t wait for that store to open,” he says. “That includes professional designers who work for companies like Nike.”

Fritts studied Ikea while working on his master’s degree in business administration.

“They’re brilliant at marketing, distribution and packaging, and I love the vignettes (showcases) that are set so people can design a style of their own,” he says.

However, while Ikea promotes itself as worker-friendly and green, Fritts suspects the company could pay its suppliers better and work with more sustainable materials. He admires the clean and simple designs of many of the products — but estimates that only 10 percent of it has “design finesse.”

Even though you might get your face in the catalog, designing for Ikea is nothing to brag about in the design world. The fact that the store has begun using well-known designers such as Hella Jongerius of JongeriusLab in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, has not gone unnoticed.

“She’s at the peak of her powers,” Fritts says. “Normally her containers sell for $2,000 to $3,000.” Her PS Jonsberg vase for Ikea? $19.99.

“Ikea has a great price-to-quality ratio,” he says. “Some of the stuff is fantastic, but in some the quality is relative to price. They use a lot of pine and poplar, soft woods that grow rapidly and are less expensive, but when stressed they don’t last very long.”

Fritts has an Ikea PS Ellan, a “brilliant rocking chair, a beautiful little piece,” in his living room. “It’s sitting by a classic Eames lounge chair and a couple of vintage (Arne) Jacobsen pieces. Actually the back has a crack on it — you get what you pay for!”

Everyone’s an aesthete
In the same vein, Kathleen Nash, the studio proprietor at Design Within Reach in the Pearl District, manages to distance her store from Ikea without disowning the concept of design for the masses.

“It’s a different price point, and we sell things that are more of an heirloom quality,” Nash says. (Design Within Reach is where you might go for a licensed Le Corbusier LC3 Grande Modele three-seat sofa ($7,250), a Glo-Ball S2 Suspension Lamp ($504) or a stackable, plastic Bellini chair ($110).)

“Today’s consumer is a lot more savvy about design, and there’s a renewed appreciation for the modernist aesthetic of finding a solution to a need,” Nash says.

She notes that Portlanders are living in smaller spaces and are keen to replace overstuffed furniture with “something that is a lot more space-efficient or has a multiple purpose.”

And yes, she, too, has shopped at Ikea in the past.

Ikea has a formula that works for both bargain-hunting aesthetes and off-the-shelf shoppers. They built it. Portlanders will come.

The only question is, how much can you carry on a MAX train?

josephgallivan@portlandtribune.com

Ikea: a play in five acts
The Ikea shopping experience is as powerful as a piece of theater – hopefully, for the company, a comedy.

Act I: This is the big-box store even liberals can love. You enter and grab a yellow shopping bag and a scorecard on which to write the Swedish names and shelf numbers of things you want. If you have kids you can exchange them for a beeper and leave them in the playroom. Swedes are big on free child care. The restaurant, with its subsidized prices and exclusive use of Ikea wares, has the feel of a Cuban vacation resort.

Act II: Following the arrows, you wander in a mazy formation, officially known as “the long natural pathway,” which takes you by the “inspirational settings” where whole rooms are furnished with Ikea products. The intoxication of total branding takes effect. There are shortcuts for experienced shoppers, but mainly Ikea wants maximum exposure of consumer to product, like the oxygenation of blood. Chipper young assistants at kiosks let you know whether your dream sofa is actually in stock.

Act III: After the furniture, you pass through the housewares section, which has pallets of impulse purchases – tea lights, picture frames, potted plants – at ridiculously low prices. After sweating the big stuff, it’s tempting to load up a cart with lamps, mirrors and cookware. And why the hell not? Everyone hates shopping for this sort of stuff, so get it all at once.

Act IV: You wander the warehouse pulling larger items from the shelves and proceed to the checkout. The “As Is” section contains scratched and scuffed items, mostly returned by shoppers, some at garage-sale prices. “Portland’s As Is will be open for business on Day One,” manager Ken Bodeen says. “We’re putting together so much stuff, some of it’s bound to get damaged.” Preowned doesn’t get much better than this.

Act V: At home you sit on the floor inhaling the smells of fiberboard and Styrofoam, trying to follow the instructional drawings and sizing up the bolts. Because of computerized patterns and milling machines the parts actually fit together well, so it’s usually easier to make a right angle than to mess it up. And you don’t have to have the missing bits sent down from Seattle. After that you start noticing your stuff in other people’s homes.

[arbeiter]

Austin is bigger than Portland. Not in metro area, but citywise it is. Not that that matters because the IKEA there is in a suburb. Either way, the metro areas are about the same in population.

It is beyond me why they wouldn't design the building to be closer to the train station, but believe me, it's a huge step above what virtually everyone else in the country gets with their IKEA's. The exception might be NYC which has a free bus to the Elizabeth NJ location.

[SpongeG]

what is it with the swedes? If its not H&M and their law breaking billboards and posters in cities around the world its IKEA and its big signs

haha

but do all these anti car people not realize its a furniture store? do they want to lug their 5 boxes of armoir home on the max? or their couch?

come on people will need cars o shop there

[zilfondel]

...or you can have them deliver...

[Snowden352]

...by car.

[samoen313]

but instead of everyone making one trip to get all their individual furniture home, an ikea truck can cover 10-20 people's deliveries.

[SpongeG]

well than the people may as well just go to ikea.com and ikea never even needed to open up in portland

[zilfondel]

Naa, it's totally different when you get the experience. Just saying... but how many people buy a bed and take it home with them?

[SpongeG]

i know just playing devils advocate

i took my bed home on the top of a neon - haha - they give you all these card board things to construct a roof top carrier thing

had to drive really slow to get home but made it eventually

reality is though most people will go to the store once a year maybe twice for big purchases its not like an everyday or every week kind of store so car trips can't be that bad

[MarkDaMan]

Get in line for gridlock
If history holds, Ikea fans will tie up traffic during the store's opening days
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
ANNA GRIFFIN
The Oregonian

Ikea isn't just a store. It's also a traffic nightmare.

The European furniture giant opens July 25, but the Port of Portland and the city already are sending out this warning:

If you want your Swedish meatballs, be prepared to stew in traffic for a while.

And those of you who have a plane to catch at nearby PDX or a meeting at one of the airport hotels next week might want to budget even more time than usual to get there once the store opens.

The company expects to welcome more than 150,000 Allen wrench aficionados over the first five days, and police and Port officials say the only question is whether our traffic jams will be as bad as those during other Ikea openings.

Seven years ago, the first Northern California Ikea caused a two-week gridlock. Two years ago in Stoughton, Mass., an Ikea debut backed up freeway traffic five miles.

The frenzy over inexpensive -- or cheap, depending on your taste -- Scandinavian sofas and storage bins has been worse overseas: In London three years ago, a half-dozen people went to the hospital for injuries when one grand opening turned into a riot. In 1995, three people died when the crowd stampeded into a new Saudi Arabian Ikea.

Portland police say they're ready, or at least as ready as they can be. The city usually sends four officers and one sergeant to control traffic outside Trail Blazers games; the team pays about $1,200 a game.

During the chain's first five days in Oregon, 40 Portland police officers will guide traffic toward and away from the store. The company's tab: $120,000.

Now that's a lot of oddly named, some-assembly-required Swedish furniture.

Anna Griffin: 503-294-5988; annagriffin@news.oregonian.com

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1184640915214870.xml&coll=7

[MarkDaMan]

^Typical bOregonian, they didn't even mention you could avoid the whole mess by getting on the MAX...which is how I will be getting there.

[twofiftyfive]

^Typical bOregonian, they didn't even mention you could avoid the whole mess by getting on the MAX...which is how I will be getting there.

Is the Cascades MAX station open? It doesn't show up on Transit Tracker.

[MarkDaMan]

^I'm not sure, I haven't rode out that way for awhile. I saw that it did have a stop ID 10574, but the transit tracker says there is no arrivals scheduled...I hope they get that stop opened in time, but the next stop isn't that far away.

[PeterSmith]

A bit off topic, but I've read the Portland forumers here and over at SSC discuss the social responsibility of just about every company that has considered opening its doors in or around Portland (a discussion that is entirely unique to the Portland forum), except for Ikea. I remember a few years ago that Ikea was under fire for employing child labor and using sweatshops to manufacture its goods. In fact, Ikea was at one point, in the opinion of quite a few, the most socially irresponsible company in the entire world. Has Ikea cleaned up its image or has Portland fallen asleep on this one?

[2oh1]

Mark - I'll be riding MAX to Ikea as well. An article I read somewhere on the internets said to expect MAX to be overflowing with people as well, which makes sense.

Damn. And I was planning on lugging home a new couch that way.

Grin.

(just for the record, I actually think Ikea and mass transit pair up beautifully)

[2oh1]

Any word on what else is going into Cascade Station? Anybody have a list? The only other noteworthy thing I've read so far is Best Buy. When Costco Home pulled out, I was hoping for a Target (yeah, right. I know). I realize the burbs are full of them, but Target on a MAX line would be nice.

[brandonpdx]

I'll be sure to avoid this area like the plague.

[pdxtraveler]

Any word on what else is going into Cascade Station? Anybody have a list? The only other noteworthy thing I've read so far is Best Buy. When Costco Home pulled out, I was hoping for a Target (yeah, right. I know). I realize the burbs are full of them, but Target on a MAX line would be nice.


Go to www.centercal.com the link for Cascade Station has a pdf with
the whole site plan.

[CouvScott]

Lot's of crap including a cross-dress-for-less
http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e214/couvttocs/cascadestation.jpg

[PacificNW]

Damn! I have to be @ the airport to pickup some family @ 10:20 am on the 25th. I am driving up from the Eugene area...any suggestions how to get to the terminal on time..?

[MarkDaMan]

^the store doesn't open until 10...so try and plan to be at the airport by 9:30 and you should be fine.

A bit off topic, but I've read the Portland forumers here and over at SSC discuss the social responsibility of just about every company that has considered opening its doors in or around Portland (a discussion that is entirely unique to the Portland forum), except for Ikea. I remember a few years ago that Ikea was under fire for employing child labor and using sweatshops to manufacture its goods. In fact, Ikea was at one point, in the opinion of quite a few, the most socially irresponsible company in the entire world. Has Ikea cleaned up its image or has Portland fallen asleep on this one?

you know, I haven't heard any bad press about the place. I know about cheap goods, from my understanding their retail employees are given better salaries and benefits than the average big box, their meatballs are wonderful, and they aren't WalMart.

If they do have a dark side, they've done a good job at hiding it from the Portland media.

[bvpcvm]

yeah, i've only heard positive things about ikea. i'm sure wal-mart, halliburton and numerous oil companies are far worse.

[WonderlandPark]

Irony: The first thing that visitors to PDX will see--in the city world famous for city planning--is a sprawling mess of Ross, Best Buy and Sports Authority.

[tworivers]

^^^ Uh-huh, and do you think there are enough parking lots? It looks like they virtually straddle the MAX tracks at the SW end. That truly may be the first thing visitors see after the train leaves the airport: a sea of parking, and most likely a swarm of cars. Well, maybe it is an appropriate metaphor for the fraying around the edges of the Portland myth? We're a lot more auto-dependent than a lot of us, myself included, like to admit, and Cascade Station seems like an admission of such, even with the window dressing of its TOD origins.

[pdxstreetcar]

I guess you could look at it another way, that there's a lot of room for infill at Cascade Station. I certainly hope over the years it evolves into a denser project with office buildings, more hotels and structured parking. The pedestrian friendly parkways which appeared to be great place making seem to now be somewhat of a waste considering the sprawling nature of the project.

[PacificNW]

One can hope... :)

[zilfondel]

A bit off topic, but I've read the Portland forumers here and over at SSC discuss the social responsibility of just about every company that has considered opening its doors in or around Portland (a discussion that is entirely unique to the Portland forum), except for Ikea. I remember a few years ago that Ikea was under fire for employing child labor and using sweatshops to manufacture its goods. In fact, Ikea was at one point, in the opinion of quite a few, the most socially irresponsible company in the entire world. Has Ikea cleaned up its image or has Portland fallen asleep on this one?

But everybody loves the Swedes! If they aren't perfect... everyone's screwed! :jester:

[westsider]

Who cares if the stuff is made by sweating children if it doesnt come from Wall Mart. Thats real social responsibility, not giving money to the Waltons. :koko:

[MarkDaMan]

^if anyone cares to post links about these practices IKEA employs, I'd be more than happy to review that info with an open mind before I spend my dollars at that store. I just haven't found much online other than some upity blogs when I Google 'IKEA sweatshops' and such...unlike, say 'WalMart sweatshops' where the first page of results are respected organizations tracking WalMart abuses.

[tworivers]

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=14272

http://www.chinalaborwatch.org/20070418Ikia.htm

Those were the first two links I found that seemed credible, the first being a le monde diplomatique article.

[CUclimber]

What a shame about the design of that area. There are some good outdoor mall layouts out there; why didn't the planners go with a more progressive design?

That just looks like a duplicate of Cedar Hills Blvd.

[brandonpdx]

^ I agree. the design is a step backward. It doesn't utilize the MAX stop. its as bad as any 80s autocentric strip mall.

I'm sure the developers are salivating over the prospect of attracting all of those Washingtonians to get in their car for tax free shopping. Hence the very poorly designed un-pedestrian friendly mall.

[PeterSmith]

Hmm, at the time I wrote that comment, I was absolutely sure of myself that I had heard numerous examples of Ikea being an evil company...but now that I search for any proof of it, I can find only examples of Ikea being a leader in corporate responsibility. Perhaps I was mistaken. I even found this interesting bit concerning it's founder:

Perhaps it's his humble beginnings - Kamprad was born and raised on a farm in Sweden - or perhaps it is the innate business sense he exhibited at an early age, buying up matches in bulk and selling them individually for a profit. Whatever the reason for Kamprad's legendary frugality, examples of it abound. He lives quietly in Lausanne with his wife, drives a 12-year-old Volvo, takes public transport to work, and routinely uses his pensioner discount card. He avoids wearing suits, flies economy class and encourages his 90,000 employees - Ikea prefers the more egalitarian "co-workers" - to write on both sides of paper. It seems to pay off: Kamprad's minimalist furniture generates more than $15bn a year in sales for Ikea, currently the world's largest furniture retailer, with more than 200 stores in 33 countries.

[Symi81]

I studied IKea at a Jesuit business school and never read anything even remotely unethical about their business practices.

Anybody who compared IKea to Wal-Mart should pull their head out...

:koko:

[zilfondel]

^^^ Apparently some chairs they manufactured in China last year only used 4% of the wood being sourced from FSC-certified forests.

Otherwise, the quality on their cheaper lines may have gone downhill some.

[MarkDaMan]

Changing the luck of the draw
After Sept. 11, 2001, the city had to alter its strategy at Cascade Station, but Portland still came out ahead
Monday, July 23, 2007

T he Red light-rail line to Portland International Airport opened Sept. 10, 2001. And that's really the best explanation of what has happened since at Cascade Station.

Fun as it may be to speculate about what went wrong with the huge transit-oriented development the airport line was supposed to trigger, there's no mystery involved.

Six years ago, the development failed to take off because of circumstances beyond Portland's control -- and beyond America's wildest imagining.

In retrospect, it's lucky for Portland that the Red line was up and running that Sept. 10. Just 24 hours later, the world was a much darker place, and everything connected to air travel had gone into an economic tailspin. Had the airport line still been languishing on TriMet's wish list at that point, we'd all likely still be waiting for the train to arrive.

Almost certainly, it wouldn't have attracted the private partnership of Bechtel Corp. Although connecting to the airport had always been a TriMet dream, it took a huge private investment to accelerate the plan and thereby realize it. In 1997, the city and the Port of Portland struck an unprecedented deal. In return for development rights to 120 acres near the airport, Bechtel agreed to provide $28 million to get the Red line built.

In retrospect, it's clear that citizens got the best of this bargain and it's fair to wonder whether Bechtel's hopes were realistic in the first place. But that's a question that remains on the table. Portland got its airport connection, even if the private development faltered. To Portland's credit, it eventually regrouped and came up with Plan B -- as in Big Box. In case you're one of the few mortals on the planet who hasn't heard, Swedish furniture pop-star Ikea is opening at Cascade Station.

Ikea is so off-the-charts popular it's actually expected to create traffic gridlock when it opens. That's what it has done elsewhere, and who knows? Maybe we can top that. Maybe it will spark retail road rage here.

Just kidding. Although it will be fascinating to see how many people use light-rail to get to the store, clearly this is not the "transit-oriented" development anyone had in mind. And yet it's a good fallback position, just the kind of stellar anchor that magnetizes shoppers and changes the luck of the draw.

Ultimately, the number of people who take light rail to Cascade Station doesn't matter as much as the number who come, any way they can, to shop there -- or the number who ride past that station.

Last year, residents of our region made more than a million trips on the Red Line to and from the airport. That single train is so valuable, Metro Councilor Brian Newman recently suggested, that it has helped transform popular opinion about light rail. Some in his once-hostile Clackamas County district, for instance, are now eagerly awaiting two light-rail connections of their own.

Plan A was inspired, but a terrible reality intruded and necessitated a shift to Plan B. How that evolves, helped along by Ikea, is very important. But whatever happens, Cascade Station has already taken the region where it wanted to go:

The airport.

http://www.oregonlive.com/editorials/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/editorial/1184972161285940.xml&coll=7

[pdxman]

So is anyone heading out to ikea today? It looks like all the bad traffic they were expecting didn't materialize--i don't know if thats good or bad. The typical laid-back reaction only portland can do

[zilfondel]

I had to work today. =(

[MarkDaMan]

mmmm...had Apple Cake for the first time yesterday, that was quite delicious.

[mcbaby]

are people utilizing the max train to get to ikea? nobody has meantioned it yet on this forum.

[pdxman]

I've taken max the two times i've gone. when i actually buy stuff tho i'll probably have to drive out there. unless i have it delivered.

[MarkDaMan]

^I've taken the MAX too. There were a lot of people, at least 50, both when getting off when I got to Ikea, and then on the train when I was done Friday evening. I've never seen ridership like that on a late Friday evening on the Red Line.

[2oh1]

I know I'm beating a dead horse here, but, could there possibly be a worse set up for the layout of Cascade Station? It's as if they didn't really want light rail there at all.

I'll be curious to see what other shops move in, and I wonder what the timeline will be before it's all complete.

I'm glad Ikea is here, and I'm all about light rail... I just feel disappointed in how they incorporated it.

Ahhhhhh well. Whatareyagonnado?

[PacificNW]

I am curious: Unless a person is disabled, and has difficulty walking, etc., what is the problem of walking from the MAX station to Ikea?

[zilfondel]

You know, I thought that Cascade Station was very pedestrian friendly. They have a wide park-like pedestrian way in between a slow-speed couplet that is actually pleasant to walk along (until you get to the IKEA parking lot), and quite a few people took the MAX when I rode it on Sunday.

Of course, there were a lot of people driving, but most of them had big shopping baskets full of stuff they bought - and there were also a LOT of large families. Like 6+ kids, the grandparents, etc.

[PDXPaul]

I was home for the weekend they opened so I took my mom. Place was a madhouse even at 830, kids running all over the place like wild little monkeys! Portland's is a lot nicer, IMO, than the one here in Renton. Much more what I 'expected' of Ikea.

I like Cascade Station, but still I couldn't help but remember the original plans for the offices and apartments and sort of feel like it's not as great a utilization of space.

btw there's a bestbuy right by the Ikea. But isn't there a bestbuy just down the road on the other side of I205? what the heck!

[MarkDaMan]

^apartments weren't ever planned. The planes fly low and the FAA and Port never would have allowed homes of any sort. Hell, they almost wouldn't allow IKEA because of land ownership issues that close to the aiport.

The offices and up to 5000 hotel rooms will be built on the vacant fields across from the initial big box Cascade Station development. In fact, an airport version of the W Hotel called Aloft has already started construction. I'm not sure the fate of that other large box of yellow closer to the airport. I believe that was the Costco Home Store that has been cancelled.

http://marketing.trammellcrow.com/portland/cascadestation/aerial.jpg

[pdxtraveler]

btw there's a bestbuy right by the Ikea. But isn't there a bestbuy just down the road on the other side of I205? what the heck!

PDXPaul.. This Best Buy replaces the one on the other side of the highway. But, yes, you are right there was.

[pdxman]

Where would the post office go in that picture?

[PDXPaul]

That's probably a good decision on Bestbuys part, Ikea will draw a lot of traffic. And 5000 hotel rooms is a lot, so I'm guessing the developments picking up steam? I remember when Bechtel got out it kind of being called a failure or whatever, but that was... a few years ago and the economy is a lot stronger now. Maybe they can turn the costco store into more offices/hotels instead of box retail.