The Wall Street Journal recently reported on IKEA’s planned expansion in the United States. Within the article (which is really a slide show), there are a couple of slides about the first store it opened in the United States in Plymouth Meeting. The store moved to its current location in Conshohocken (Plymouth Township) in 2003.

According to the article, when the store first opened at the Plymouth Meeting Mall in 1985 it had 150,000 customers a week! And people think there is a lot of traffic now?

You can find the article here.

If you are newer to the area you are probably wondering where IKEA was located at the mall.

In the above overhead image from 1992, Germantown Pike is the roadway on the left. The “1” shows the IKEA store building and “2” is IKEA’s North American headquarters. The area shown as “3” is where the movie theater would be built. The main mall building is marked by “4.”

This overhead shows the mall in 1999. Everything is the same, but now the movie theater (“3”) has been constructed.

As mentioned above, IKEA moved its store from the mall property in 2003. Where its store had previously been located at the mall (“1”) has now been cleared of the building. The IKEA office building (“2”) still stands and is long vacant.

In 2008, the outdoor extension of the mall that today includes Whole Foods Market was under construction. This new portion of the mall includes the area that had been home to the IKEA store.

The Whole Foods and other stores in the new extension opened in 2010.

Photos: Google Earth