BROOKLYN, Ohio - It's back to the drawing board for Ikea.

The Swedish furniture giant quietly walked away from land in Brooklyn late last week, after more than a year spent studying the suburban Cleveland site.

Tuesday evening, a spokesman confirmed that Brooklyn is out. That means Ikea - one of the most-mentioned retailers on Northeast Ohio's aspirational shopping list - isn't any closer to opening a brick-and-mortar store here.

The backstory: The Plain Dealer reported in late 2014 that Ikea had signed a purchase agreement on 16 acres in Brooklyn. That land belongs to the newspaper's corporate parent, The Plain Dealer Publishing Co., and sits just north of the paper's printing plant at Interstate 480 and Tiedeman Road.

Ikea's study window - its due diligence period - ended Feb. 15. And Ikea, faced with what appeared to be insurmountable environmental obstacles, opted to end negotiations instead of extending its agreement to buy the property.

This map shows the proposed location and configuration of the Ikea store, on a site just north of The Plain Dealer's printing facility in Brooklyn. Ikea recently dropped a purchase agreement on the Brooklyn property.

The land just can't be developed - at least not the way that Ikea needed to develop it, said Joseph Roth, the spokesman.

"We were hopeful that this location (or part of it) would be deemed developable for a potential Ikea store," Roth wrote in an email. "However, it does not appear to be likely at this point."

The retailer had lined up a broader site, combining The Plain Dealer property with adjacent land owned by the city of Brooklyn, for a 366,500-square-foot store and parking.

That property includes roughly 15 acres of wetlands, which fall under the guardianship of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as part of the Clean Water Act.

Last year, Ikea asked the Army Corps to give the Brooklyn plan a thumbs-up and to allow the retailer to compensate for any wetlands loss through conservation efforts elsewhere in northern Ohio. The agency's regional office put a public notice about the project on its website in July and has been considering Ikea's request.

Roth said Ikea hasn't received a formal rejection yet from the Army Corps. But, he added, the signals didn't look good. So it didn't make sense for Ikea to sink more money and time into a site where the retailer wouldn't be able to do anything.

An Army Corps spokesman couldn't be reached for comment Tuesday night. The agency hasn't offered any public updates on the project since July, when the Army Corps asked for public comments on Ikea's plan. Politicians and economic-development officials sent letters expressing support. But the proposal met with resistance from local water-quality groups that said Ikea should build elsewhere.

The original Army Corps public notice said that Ikea studied 32 alternative sites in the region. The agency did not identify those properties but said the analysis would be available "upon request;" however, the agency has not provided a copy of that alternative-site study to The Plain Dealer, in response to a public records request filed more than six months ago.

Ikea doesn't have any other Cleveland-area sites in mind, Roth said, though the retailer hasn't lost interest in Northeast Ohio. Ikea, a privately held company that takes its time choosing and assessing sites, typically needs 20 to 30 acres for a 250,000- to 400,000-square-foot store and parking.

"We continue to recognize the customer base that exists for us in Northeast Ohio and will evaluate opportunities as they arise," Roth wrote in an email.

For now, local shoppers seeking ready-to-assemble furniture and household goods will continue to drive a few hours to Pittsburgh or the Detroit suburbs.

Or they can bide their time until the Columbus Ikea opens in 2017.