Ikea has announced plans to open its first store in Wisconsin, expanding the retailer’s presence in the Midwest.
The company submitted plans Thursday for a location in Oak Creek, about 12 miles south of Milwaukee.
The 295,000-square-foot store would be built on 29 acres at the northwestern corner of Interstate 94 and Drexel Avenue, the company said. It plans to open the new location by summer 2018.
“We are excited at the possibility of growing our Midwestern U.S. presence with a Milwaukee-area store,” Ikea U.S. president Lars Petersson said in a statement. “A location in the retail corridor would provide our already 206,000 Milwaukee-area customers their own store.”
The store will include nearly 10,000 exclusively designed items, 50 room settings, three model home interiors, a restaurant and a play area for children.
The Wisconsin location joins stores in Bolingbrook and Schaumburg in Illinois and in the Twin Cities-area in Minnesota.
Earlier this year, Ikea increased its average minimum hourly wage to $11.87, which is $4.62 above the current federal wage and marks a $1.11 increase, or 10 percent, from last year’s average minimum pay. The increase affected 32 percent of Ikea's 10,500 U.S. store workers and raised the average hourly wage to $15.45.
