Helicopter air lifts IKEA air conditioners onto megastore’s roof
A helicopter lifts an air conditioning unit to the roof of the new IKEA building in Burbank on Saturday, June 11, 2016.
At 465,000 square feet, the new IKEA store in Burbank will be the Swedish retailer’s largest in the United States, which means it will hold a lot more people than the outgoing store in the city.
A building that massive is going to require more than just a couple air conditioners to keep customers cool. So, on Saturday, 47 large, industrial air-conditioning units were airlifted by helicopter to the top of the new IKEA building to be installed.
“It’s a large building, and it needs lots of air conditioning,” said Joseph Roth, an IKEA spokesman. “Not everyone realizes what a challenge it could be sometimes to get air-conditioning units on the roof of a large building. It’s a very exciting milestone, and it’s a really good visual to mark that progress is continuing.”
Workers look on as a helicopter lifts an air conditioning unit on the roof of the new IKEA building in Burbank on Saturday, June 11, 2016.
The air-conditioning units were carefully dropped at the desired locations on the roof. Though almost 50 units were lifted that day, the entire process took only a few hours, Roth said.
Officials broke ground at the site, 805 S. San Fernando Blvd., last September and since then, construction crews have been working around the clock to finish the new Swedish megastore, which is expected to open to the public in spring 2017, Roth said.
There are currently three key construction activities happening on the site. Crews are working on the parking deck, made from precast concrete. More of the iconic blue panels are being installed to form the shell of the building. Mechanical, electrical and plumbing work has just started inside the building.
“We’re very excited,” Roth said. “We had some customers showing up to the new store already, so we have to shroud our store as much as possible.”
The existing 242,000-square-foot store in the Burbank Town Center, which was the first IKEA to open in California in 1990, has remained open during the past 10 months of construction.
After the new IKEA store is finished and opens, developer Crown Realty and Development Inc. announced in May its proposal to demolish the former facility and build a six-story, mixed-use project with 765 apartments and about 40,000 square feet of retail space on the ground level.
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Anthony Clark Carpio, anthonyclark.carpio@latimes.com
Twitter: @acocarpio
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