Opening date set for new Las Vegas IKEA store

Furniture superstore IKEA said Thursday that it will open its Las Vegas store at 9 a.m. on May 18.

Customers can begin lining up for the grand opening on May 16, and they can check a new website — IKEA-USA.com/LasVegas — for grand opening plans and promotions.

The 351,000-square-foot store will be IKEA’s first Nevada store, and 42nd U.S. store.

“We are thrilled by the excellent construction progress made to date, and believe we can complete the remaining milestones and interior build-up by mid-May,” said store manager Amy Jensen. “We look forward to introducing customers in Southern Nevada to a whole new way of shopping for the home.”

Jensen said the company is in the midst of training the store’s 300 employees.

The store will contain nearly 10,000 items exclusive to the Swedish retailer. It will also have 50 room settings, three model-home interiors, a kids’ play area and a 450-seat restaurant serving Swedish specialties including meatballs with lingonberries and salmon plates.

The building, on 26 acres along the 215 Beltway at Durango Drive near Sunset Road, will also have Nevada’s largest single-use retail rooftop solar array.

It will be by far the largest store in Nevada, dwarfing by 43 percent the current titleholder, a 245,000-square-foot Walmart Supercenter at Tropicana Avenue and Fort Apache Road.

Construction began in April, with 500 workers on the job site during peak building activity.

IKEA executives said last spring that they already had 101,000 website and catalog customers in the Las Vegas Valley. They decided to build a store here after the population tipped past the 2 million mark.

Contact Jennifer Robison at jrobison@reviewjournal.com. Follow @_JRobison on Twitter.