DRAPER - An IKEA opening can only be done large.
Overflowing parking lots. Day-glo colors. Blaring Black Box, Flock of Seagulls and Abba music. And, most important, long lines.
The launch of Utah's own Swedish superstore had all the elements required to whip up a shopping frenzy: free stuff, blocked-off roads and die-hard fans camping out for not one, but two nights. Kind of like a "Star Wars" premiere without the costumes, or a Days of '47 Parade with less salt-water taffy. There were stilt-walkers, politicians, beauty queens, a P.R. team from Pennsylvania and nearly every officer in the police department.
It all lent an air of urgency to what was, essentially, a giant ribbon-cutting. Or, in keeping with Swedish tradition, a log-cutting.
"We all feel a little bit Swedish today," said Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., evoking his Grandma Olson for cred with the crowd.
Furniture and design snobs consider this scripted spectacle of wholesome fun a joke on easily-manipulated customers suckered by IKEA World's cheap cool - 10,000 items made in 53 countries. It is all a bit over-the-top and overwhelming. Still, it obviously works, generating $20 billion in revenue worldwide.
IKEA's opening Wednesday was simple validation for Utahns who yearn for a Trader Joe's, Cheesecake Factory or Crate & Barrel - chain-store measures of hipness. With the Bjursta dining table and Ektorp sofa, the state arrived on an elusive plane of being - the "We have an IKEA" level.
In the have and have-not world of business recruitment, Draper Economic Development Director David Baird is quick to note Denver can't claim an IKEA. Neither can Las Vegas. The 310,000-square-foot Draper store is the 30th U.S. location. Baird expects U-Haulers from Idaho, Wyoming, Nevada and Colorado to trek to the south end of Salt Lake Valley.
"This is kind of the magnet," he said.
City leaders waived impact fees and laid a new road, IKEA Way, for the company. They also agreed not to release the superstore's carefully guarded revenue estimates. A store outside Chicago was projected to make more than $2.5 million annually. Draper, a one-time cow-town and suburb of Sandy, has arrived.
"This was Draper's field of dreams," said Mayor Darrell Smith, resorting to cliché.
And so they came.
Matt Juillerat biked to the blocked-off parking lot Monday at 6 a.m. He was first in line for a wristband, earning one of 100 $79 Poang bent-wood chairs after two days of playing cards in the chilly parking lot.
"It's not just a store, it's an outing," said Juillerat, who picked up his chair and left quickly. He plans to come back, but "not anytime soon."
Gull-Britt Richardson, a 69-year-old immigrant from Sweden, passed out treats to the crowd, then slipped into the cavernous store for Havreflarn cookies. "Whenever I go home, I come back with suitcases full," she said.
Hoping to avert the mayhem that ensued at an IKEA opening in London two years ago, where a man was stabbed, and three trampling deaths in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, three years ago, IKEA staff regularly monitored the campers for two days - no cutting or saving a spot.
The draw is undeniable. I squeezed a stuffed green dragon ($12.99) and reached for a yellow plastic bag. I bought a $3.99 plastic stool, $5.99 finger-puppets, dinner napkins (100 for $2.99) and a 59-cent bag to carry it all out with me.
I left IKEA an hour after I went in - and $69 lighter. The line, stretched around the building, was 40 minutes long.
walsh@sltrib.com
