Scratch that potential Ikea store location at Transportation Boulevard in Garfield Heights off the list of active Northeast Ohio real estate rumors.

Only in this case the report it's not coming is no rumor.

Garfield Heights Mayor Vic Collova said in a phone interview on Thursday, Sept. 13, that his staff was told on Sept. 6 that Ikea is no longer considering a site in the suburb for one of its stores.

"There was no we're sorry or anything," Collova said. "We only got to participate in the call because the developer (Steven Craig of Newport Beach, Calif.-based Craig Realty) wanted us on the phone with an Ikea executive as he got the word."

Ikea said it felt the 70-acre site in Garfield Heights had a wetlands issue and that it is changing to emphasize an online format to compete with the likes of Amazon, Collova said.

"It's a huge setback for the city of Garfield Heights," the mayor said. "We were banking on it happening."

However, Collova said the suburb did not lose any out-of-pocket money, just staff time, in the quest. He said the first meeting with Ikea required opening City Hall on a holiday when it was normally closed so fewer people would be around to maintain secrecy. He could not recall which holiday it was.

The mayor had previously refused to confirm rumors in the real estate grapevine that one of Ikea's famous 200,000-square-foot stores was in the works in the suburb.

"Now I'm talking about what's not happening in Garfield Heights," the mayor said.

Ikea spokeswoman Latisha Bracey, who had declined to comment on rumors of a Garfield Heights location for the retail as late as Aug. 21, did not return a phone call by 3 p.m. Thursday.

Craig is a well-known developer of outlet shops and owns 15 CRG Outlets. He bought distressed loans from lenders who controlled the 70-acre site in 2011. He said at that time he speculated on such sites as a sideline to his outlet center business. He circulated plans for an outlet center on the site, but that was dropped in 2016.

A prior plan to develop the location, on the northwest corner of the I-480 interchange at Transportation, landed in Cuyahoga Common Pleas Court in 2009.

That is because a prior plan to construct an 800,000-square-foot shopping center called Bridgeview Crossing failed as tenants dropped out of the project in the souring economy that culminated in the Great Recession in 2008.

Structural steel for a small shopping center has sat unchanged on the property for more than a decade.