Ikea

Check your enthusiasm, Cleveland. Yes, Ikea continues to study a site in Brooklyn for one of its warehouse-size stores. But there's no imminent construction project or store opening.

(Mark Lennihan, Associated Press)

BROOKLYN, Ohio -- Social media was all atwitter Thursday night after a local television station reported that Ikea could start construction soon in the Cleveland area and open a local store in 2016.

Sorry to burst your bandblad (that's Swedish furniture-speak for a fancy pillow).

But even if Ikea was ready to announce a Cleveland-area store - which it isn't - there's no way the retailer could welcome shoppers to a local warehouse next year.

The tizzy started after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers office in Buffalo posted a public notice about a potential Ikea project in Brooklyn, where the retailer has been studying 35 acres spanning plots owned by the city and The Plain Dealer Publishing Co.

Ikea has asked the Army Corps for a verdict on whether the site, which includes 23 acres of wetlands, can be built on.

According to the Army Corps document, the Ikea project would involve a two-story store, comprising 366,500 square feet, and impact 15.5 acres of wetlands. The Army Corps, which has jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act, must decide whether to issue or deny a permit for the project. The agency is asking for public feedback on the proposal through Aug. 11.

"We need their help in determining what, if any, is developable," said Joseph Roth, an Ikea spokesman. "It could be that it doesn't work at all, according to them, in which case then there's no opportunity whatsoever. We can't do anything until we have some sort of clarity from them."

Ikea has not filed any permit requests or plans with Brooklyn. If the retailer gets a favorable verdict from the Army Corps and proceeds with a project, expect plenty of fanfare when Ikea does submit plans. The company typically holds a large news conference in conjunction with public filings.

It takes Ikea 15 to 18 months to build a store, from groundbreaking to opening, and that timeline doesn't account for a tough winter or construction hiccups. In January, the retailer announced plans to build in the Columbus area, but construction on that project won't start until the spring. And that store isn't scheduled to open until summer 2017.

"There's no way a store could open by 2016 ... because we're already in July of 2015," Roth said, responding to erroneous news reports about a near-term Cleveland project.

Plain Dealer General Manager Virginia Wang and Fran Migliorino, the city of Brooklyn's economic-development director, said due diligence related to the potential land deals is ongoing.

"There is no confirmation that they are opening," Migliorino said. "They haven't made a commitment. We have absolutely no building drawings here to approve at the city of Brooklyn. ... We would be more than ecstatic if they made a firm commitment that they're coming to Brooklyn and Northeast Ohio."

The wetlands on the Brooklyn site include a retention pond and landscaping created when The Plain Dealer built its printing press complex on Tiedeman Road in the early 1990s.

"It's not a sanctuary," Migliorino said. "It's not a preserve. And it's certainly not the beaches of Lake Erie."

To compensate for the wetlands loss, Ikea would support preservation of nearly 39 acres of land in the region through a process that involves buying "mitigation credits." Basically, the retailer will reimburse groups that already have created or conserved wetlands. The proposed replacement properties are near the Edison Woods Preserve, in Erie County, and at another undetermined site in the Cuyahoga River watershed, according to the notice published by the Army Corps. Ikea also needs approvals from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency.

"The Corps of Engineers is dedicated to protecting the nation's aquatic resources while allowing reasonable and necessary development to go forward," Bruce Sanders, a spokesman for the Army Corps in Buffalo, wrote in an email.

It's tough to put a timeline on that approval process, said Mark Scalabrino, chief of the Ohio applications section for the regulatory branch of the Army Corps. "The level of impact that [Ikea is] proposing is one that's higher than what we typically see," he said, referring to the size of the property and patch of wetlands involved. "With that will come some additional data."

If Ikea gets a thumbs-up from the EPA and the Army Corps and decides to proceed with the Brooklyn project, the soonest a local store might open is 2017, Migliorino said.