The Scarborough IKEA will close next year
Unfortunately not even $4.99 Swedish gravadlax could get people to shop in person
Sad news for Scarborough residents who love affordable Scandinavian design and a cheeky cinnamon bun on the way out: IKEA announced yesterday that its Scarborough Town Centre location will close early next year.
“Shifting consumer behaviour towards online shopping, combined with a limited range of products that could be offered within the smaller footprint, have resulted in lower-than-expected performance,” the company said in a press release. (The Scarborough store is a city-centre location, with less space and selection than a full-size IKEA.)
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According to the release, 162.6 million people visited IKEA Canada’s website in 2024, compared with just 33.8 million who shopped in-store across the country.
Once the store closes, customers can travel to the next closest location, in North York.
Not that there’s any silver lining to employees losing their jobs—130 of them, in this case—but if we were to find a bright side, it’d be that the good people of Scarborough never have to endure the construction of a diabolical 150-piece Pax wardrobe ever again.
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Carly Lewis is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired, Interview Magazine, Pitchfork, Elle, and Maclean’s, where she is a contributing editor. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards. She reports on city life, culture—including what people do online—politics, art and crime. She received the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award for “The Murder of Ashley Wadsworth,” an investigative feature about a Canadian teenager who was killed by a man she met on social media, published by Maclean’s.
