The Village of Bolingbrook has released a statement after IKEA said it was closing its 313,000 square-foot store in the southwest suburb and instead reopening a smaller spot in a different city.
Bolingbrook Mayor Mary Alexander-Basta said village officials first learned of IKEA’s plans to relocate the store to a smaller-format location in Naperville through news reports published Oct. 6.
“IKEA has been part of the Bolingbrook business community since receiving occupancy for its store in September 2004,” Alexander-Basta’s statement said in part. “The current Bolingbrook store is approximately 313,000 square feet, much larger than their new location, which will be approximately 66,000 square feet. The move to a significantly smaller retail footprint is consistent with IKEA’s evolving retail strategy, which includes moving into smaller-format stores and providing customers with additional ways to shop.”
In February, IKEA announced a small-format store would be coming to Gurnee Mills Mall in the fall of 2026. The store, IKEA said at the time was part of a rollout of new “small-format” stores with a much smaller footprint. IKEA’s Bolingbrook store was relocating, the Swedish furniture giant said, to “meet customers where they are.”
“The 66,000-square-foot stores are a far cry from the sprawling warehouse-style locations that became popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s.” IKEA’s first Illinois location, which opened in Schaumburg in 1998, at over 400,000-square-feet, was at the time the company’s largest store in North America.
In a news release issued Aug. 19, IKEA said it was shifting its strategy to “give customers greater flexibility in how and where they shop.”
“IKEA has long been known for beautifully designed, inspirational room settings featured in our traditional big blue box stores – an expansive shopping experience that customers plan a day around, complete with our winding showrooms and Swedish meatballs,” the release said. “These flagship stores remain central to how we meet customers.”
The release went on to say it had expanded into smaller-footprint stores in high-traffic areas to “complement” its traditional ones, with 29 new kinds of stores and “meeting points.” That includes stores that are one-tenth the size of its traditional ones, plan and order pick-up points and a pilot of IKEA inside select Best Buy locations, the release said.
“IKEA is thoughtfully evolving its store network to meet changing customer needs – balancing growth in emerging communities with updates to, and in some cases closures of, locations that no longer align with shopping behaviors,” IKEA said. “This approach allows the company to focus investments where they can have the greatest impact while continuing to improve accessibility and convenience for customers nationwide.”
Alexander-Basta said IKEA owns the 27-acre property in Bolingbrook. What might become of the space after the store closes was not immediately clear.
“With IKEA’s plans now public, the Village looks forward to opening a dialogue with the company regarding its plans for the 27-acre property,” Alexander-Basta said. “This prominent site along the I355 and Boughton Road corridor presents significant opportunities for its future, including potential redevelopment.”
The new IKEA store at Naperville’s Block 50 shopping center is slated to open in late 2027, and the Bolingbrook location will remain open until then. IKEA did not immediately respond to NBC Chicago’s request for comment on when the Gurnee store will open.
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