IKEA shelves plans for Fort Worth location

Plans for a third North Texas IKEA have been tabled.

The city of Fort Worth announced in February 2017 that the home furnishings retailer would be built near I-35 West and North Tarrant Parkway. It would join the two other IKEA stores in Frisco and Grand Prairie.

But since then, plans have changed.

IKEA is bailing out of an area that is booming and one of the most vibrant in far North Fort Worth. Economists say there's more going on with IKEA’s decision.

A lot of shoppers may think of IKEA as a cool store with so much to see. But there will be no assembly required for a third store planned in Fort Worth since IKEA has shelved those plans.

"The Millennials and the generation coming up, they're going to use their phones, use their laptops to order stuff,” said Allyn Needham with Needham Economic Analysis. “You don't need a 250,000 square-foot store."

Ikea says it's not building the Fort Worth store because of what the company calls a “rapidly changing retail economy.”

"There's a lot of dynamic things that are happening,” Needham said. “It's not the DFW economy that has caused this decision."

The Fort Worth store was supposed to complete IKEA's triangle concept to fit in with its stores in Frisco and Grand Prairie. IKEA says it wants to expand into more urban areas to be more accessible to consumers and expand into e-commerce. Many retailers are already rushing in that direction.

“The former big box places, whether out of shopping malls or standalone big boxes, are trying to figure out how to hold onto the market share we have,” Needham said. “But with e-commerce, how to reach out to the next generation and the generation after that."

It shouldn't be difficult to find businesses who want the land that IKEA will leave vacant.

"This has more to do with not wanting to have the big footprint, not wanting to have the cost for maintaining the big footprint and the number of employees that come with it,” Needham said.

Fort Worth had offered a hefty tax break for the new IKEA store. That goes away now, but it depends on who steps up next.