IKEA workers ready Las Vegas store for May opening — VIDEO

Geoffrey Espero works in food service.

So what was the Henderson man doing assembling furniture on Wednesday?

Espero, 21, was helping put together tables and chairs inside IKEA’s southwest Las Vegas store, where the countdown is on for a planned May 18 opening.

“It’s overwhelming and exciting, and it makes me very proud every day in and out,” Espero said of working at the company he joined nearly two months ago. “It’s amazing to see what we’ve laid our hands on — that’s what makes me appreciate the whole experience. I can say, ‘I built that.’”

Espero will work inside IKEA’s restaurant, but on Wednesday he was one of about 200 IKEA workers finishing display shelves, building furniture and stocking merchandise inside the 351,000-square-foot store along the 215 Beltway between Sunset and Durango roads. Another 60 IKEA employees from some of the company’s 41 other U.S. stores are set to come out starting next week to help with tagging, displays and “bringing our products to life,” said store manager Amy Jensen.

A tour showed definite progress inside the store. But it also revealed how much work employees have left to do. The store has taken in 42 semis full of products for sale — fewer than half of the 115 trucks that will ultimately fill the shelves and showroom floor. Once complete, IKEA’s store will offer 10,000 items for sale.

The Swedish retailer should find plenty of takers for those goods.

The company already has more than 100,000 catalog customers in the Las Vegas Valley, as well as local fans who’ve been making the trip to IKEA stores in Arizona, California and Utah.

Inside their new hometown store, Las Vegans will enter a first-floor lobby with lockers for coats and anything else they don’t want to carry as they shop. There’ll also be a child-care and kids’ play area for parents who want to focus on furniture for a couple of hours.

An escalator will take patrons up to the second-floor showroom; immediately to the right, they’ll see a 10,000-square-foot, 450-seat restaurant with floor-to-ceiling windows looking out on the Spring Mountains and Red Rock Canyon.

On Wednesday, the restaurant was filled with new employees in a training session. As Jensen led a reporting crew past the eatery and through the 70,000-square-foot showroom, dozens of workers were hammering and sawing to put together some of the floor’s 50 room settings and three model-home interiors.

“The goal is to give customers ideas on solving dilemmas in their home,” Jensen said of the displays.

The store is also a testament to ecofriendly retail.

Its 102,000-square-foot warehouse has 56 skylights to limit the need for electric lighting. It has on-site balers for recycling of glass, paper and cardboard — the store will divert at least 70 percent of its waste away from landfills, said Joseph Roth, head of expansion and property public affairs for IKEA U.S.A. Efforts to slash packaging include a shrink-wrapped block of 100 tealights, repriced from $4.99 to $3.99 to reflect the cheaper cost of getting the candles onto shelves.

On the roof, there’s a 5.5-acre, 3,620-panel solar array that will provide as much as 60 percent of the store’s power.

IKEA is still hiring. The company needs about 100 more workers, particularly in food service, sales, logistics and customer relations, including cashier services. For more information, visit https://seeacareerwithus.com/.

IKEA’s official opening is May 18 at 9 a.m., but the store has invited customers to begin lining up outside the building on May 16. Store officials are working on specials and promotions for the grand opening, Roth said. Customers can watch for those deals at IKEA-USA.com/LasVegas.

Espero plans on becoming an early customer — and bringing lots of company.

“I’m really excited for my family and friends here,” he said. “IKEA is about that — being very family-friendly to support the lives of many people. I have a lot of people in my life who I would like to experience this store.”

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