Pepper Construction to break ground on IKEA's first Wisconsin store
Swedish retailer IKEA is breaking ground on its first Wisconsin store later this month.
Pepper Construction, with offices in Barrington, is the construction manager for the 291,000-square-foot store that will be built in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, a suburb about 12 miles south of Milwaukee.
The new single level store will resemble the IKEA store in Bolingbrook, spokesman Joseph Roth said.
He added that Pepper Construction, a full-service construction management, design/build and general contracting firm, has constructed several IKEA stores, including the one that opened Wednesday in Columbus, Ohio and another expected to open this fall in Fishers, Indiana.
The retailer has a huge following and attracts hundreds of shoppers on opening day. "We typically have several hundred to several thousand folks in line by the time the doors open and that was the case" Wednesday in Ohio when the company's 44th location opened.
To support the popular retailer's Midwest expansion, the company is building its Midwest distribution center in Joliet on 72 acres at the Laraway Crossings Business Park.
Scheduled to open next spring, the approximately 1.25-million-square-foot distribution center will serve inventory needs of stores throughout the Midwestern U.S., as well as customer fulfillment. Goods received by the Joliet facility will reflect the nearly 10,000 exclusively designed items currently sold at all IKEA stores worldwide, the company said.
The Joliet facility will complement IKEA's U.S. distribution network, comprised of two fulfillment centers on the west coast and three on the east. The central location will allow goods to be received at coastal ports from both Asia and Europe and then transported inland to the Joliet facility.