IKEA has been in the Seattle area since the 1990s, but until recently its store here has been an anomaly.

Instead of being the classic two-story furniture-up and housewares-down building known the world over, it had been making due with an old aerospace warehouse. It was one-story, and it had a cave-like entrance.

But it had one thing IKEA decided it didn’t want to change: It was in Renton.

Renton is a place many distribution businesses consider the center of the region. It's accessible from the Eastside as well as Seattle and Tacoma, on I-405 and I-5. It's also between the ports, putting it near the heart of the flow of goods into our region from the rest of the world.

In the time IKEA has been in Renton, however, other cities in North America have gotten more IKEAs. The Washington, D.C., metro area, with 6 million people, has two. Toronto, also with 6 million people, has three. Vancouver, B.C., with only 2.5 million people, has two. The Puget Sound region has 4 million people and one IKEA.