The rezoning of a site on 8 hectares in Springvale, announced by the Planning Minister Justin Madden today, has been the trigger to start works to begin on Monday (Jan. 11).

The combined construction including tenant works is expected to reach $300million. Probuild, the national construction company, headquartered in Victoria, is the successful tenderer. In built form the building equates to an 80-floor office building

Leading home furnishings retailer IKEA has announced in conjunction with Harvey Norman development plans for its biggest Australian store yet.

The massive 80,000 square metre site is on the corner of Princes Highway and Westall Road, Springvale, in Melbourne’s south-east.

David Hood, IKEA Australia Country Manager, said the Greater Dandenong Council had given development approval for a new 32,000 square metre IKEA store on the Springvale site to be jointly developed by IKEA and Harvey Norman, which is building its own 10,000 sq metre store, A further 30,000sqm will accommodate around 20 of Australia’s leading large format retailers.

A spokesperson for Harvey Norman said rezoning of the site could well set the framework for other developments that have been put on hold due to uncertainty of planning issues. While Victoria has held the dominant position in terms of economic growth, other states are now showing signs of recovery and will start to attract the investment dollars in this market sector. A strong lead by the Victorian Government could well swing the balance back in its favour.

Mr. Gerry Harvey, Executive Chairman of Harvey Norman Ltd is known to be at the forefront of support for Australian manufacturing and this is backed up by purchases of almost $½ billion annually from Australian furniture and bedding manufacturers. Every new store that opens serves to underpin this support.

“We are very happy to have received the go-ahead from the Council to start construction on the new IKEA Springvale store which will be 25 percent bigger than our IKEA Richmond store,” Mr Hood said.

“Now that construction is to start, completion will be in early 2012. The total development area in conjunction with Harvey Norman will be over 72,000 square metres with almost 3,000 parking spaces.

According to Mr. Hood, the retailer had originally hoped to open the store earlier, but he was taking positives out of the delay. “Our project team now has more time for planning the store construction and design to maximise new technology and environmental features; as well as extra time for recruitment, training and preparations for a successful opening.”

“We are very excited about the plans for our new store and believe the location of the Springvale site offers incredible potential for both IKEA and Harvey Norman. There will be no other homemaker centre quite like this in Australia,” Mr Hood said.

“The whole development will also bring hundreds of job opportunities to the Dandenong area with the IKEA store alone directly creating well over 350 new jobs.”

The Harvey Norman store and the other retailers are expected to generate another 300 jobs.

IKEA is the world’s largest home furnishings retailer with over 285 stores in 36 countries/territories, employing more than 135,000 co-workers. In the 2009 financial year, a total of 590 million people visited IKEA stores globally, and over 198 million copies of the annual IKEA catalogue were distributed in 52 editions and 27 languages. Last year, the turnover for all IKEA stores was 21.5 billion euros (approx A$40 billion).

Harvey Norman has more than 190 stores nationwide and another 60-plus stores in Europe, Asia and New Zealand. Last year the publicly listed company had a turnover of more than $2.5 billion and a net profit of more than $250 million, despite the global financial crisis.

For further media information, please contact:
Jude Leon, (02) 8754 2442 or 0439 904 026 jude.leon@ikea.com
Norman Fay (Harvey Norman) 0418 99 44 35 normanfay@mediaaffairs.com.au