Cary Towne Center Mall & IKEA

The world-renowned Swedish home furnishings store IKEA continues to make progress and move closer to coming to Cary. Following the Town Council’s approval of a rezoning and Preliminary Development Plan (PDP)  on October 26, 2017 IKEA submitted detailed development plans in December that are working their way through the Town’s Development Review Committee.

This iterative review process, where staff works with IKEA’s development team to ensure that the plan meets the conditions of the rezoning as well as the Town’s Land Development Ordinance, will take a number of months to complete. In addition to development plan approval, detailed drawings of the building will be reviewed to ensure compliance with the North Carolina State Building Code. The approved development plan and the building plans will then be used by Town inspectors and IKEA’s contractors to construct the store.

The new zoning represents the first phase in the redevelopment of Cary Towne Center Mall. IKEA’s new two-story building, which includes approximately 380,000 square feet of floor area and a parking deck, will combine to redevelop the northern portion of the existing site, replacing some of the existing mall building, including the former Sears.

A rezoning and Preliminary Development Plan  have also been submitted for the second phase of the mall’s redevelopment, proposing to rezone another 55 acres of the site from General Commercial-Conditional Use (GC- CU) to Mixed Use District (MXD). This proposal is currently being reviewed by Town staff, and collaborative dialogue is underway between the staff and the applicant regarding the proposal’s consistency with the Town’s Imagine Cary Community Plan and the policies associated with the Eastern Cary Gateway Special Planning Area.