The IKEA store planned for Somerville’s Assembly Square, shown above in an artist’s rendering, would be part of a $1.3 billion, transit-oriented mixed-use development.

The 10-year wait for an IKEA store in Somerville could be near an end.

Sweden’s purveyor of inexpensive, build-it-yourself furniture that lures 458 million shoppers to its U.S. showrooms annually presented plans for a store in Assembly Square last week to the Somerville Planning Board. The 340,000-square-foot, warehouse-style blue-and-yellow building also would house a 250-seat restaurant serving Swedish meatballs.

While nearly all of the residents who testified at the Planning Board hearing favored the project, the developers faced an avalanche of criticism that the projected traffic has been underestimated and the remedies are inadequate for such a regional megastore.

“IKEA’s traffic is legendary,” said state Rep. Denise Provost, a Democrat whose district abuts Assembly Square and is one of the few project opponents. “Lots of people in Somerville are bracing themselves for what they believe will be permanent gridlock.”

IKEA is just the first phase of what is expected to be a $1.3 billion, transit-oriented mixed-use development that would feature 1.75 million square feet of office space, 852,000 square feet of retail, a cinema, a 200-room hotel, 2,100 apartments and condominiums, and a new MBTA Orange Line station on the 50-acre site.

The packed hearing comes nearly one year after IKEA, a citywide advocacy group known as the Mystic View Task Force and project developer Federal Realty Investment Trust reached a dramatic accord.

Under the terms of the agreement that ended a decade of lawsuits by the community group, Federal would proceed with construction. Perhaps the biggest compromise was a promise by the developer to contribute $15 million toward a $40 million Orange Line stop between the Sullivan Square and Wellington stations to help keep cars off city streets.

A succession of Assembly Square landlords and Somerville mayors fought to turn the failed Assembly Square Mall into a destination place for big-box stores. Mystic View, however, argued for denser devolvement. The group said the site along the Mystic River would be better served with office and research-and-development space, which generates more tax dollars and less traffic than giant retail stores.

‘Potentially Stifling’

Despite the agreement to support the project, several Mystic View members couldn’t resist critiquing the plan to build the IKEA store just off Interstate 93.

One member, David Dahlbacka, said he believes the IKEA traffic estimates for its Somerville store are overly optimistic.

“The proposed IKEA is 23 percent larger than the previous one, but they’re claiming the traffic is 10 percent less,” he said. “There are problems with their methodology because they take credit for being transit-oriented years before we are going to get the benefit from an Orange Line stop. The estimates should be realities so that the mitigation can be appropriate to the site.”

Wig Zamore, a founding member of Mystic View, urged IKEA and Federal to bring the T stop online quickly, not in 2013 as they have pledged. Other speakers called upon them to increase the amount of green space, improve pedestrian and bike access, and reserve IKEA jobs for Somerville residents.

A Mount Vernon Street homeowner said she was concerned that mitigation has not been proposed for Sullivan Square. She noted that while the plan encourages traffic to exit on I-93 at the exit closest to Assembly Square, motorists might get off at Sullivan when they see the IKEA signs.

“Sullivan is already backed up most of the time in the afternoons,” she said. “There are already 200,000 cars on I-93 and the pollution is bad enough.”

Carrie Dancy, executive director of East Somerville Main Streets, a nonprofit group dedicated to the revitalization of nearby Broadway, said while she wants to embrace the project, traffic is a major worry for merchants.

“Our first concern is the potentially stifling effect of congestion on the existing businesses in the district,” she said. “It could compromise the quality of resident and shopper life at a time when we’re trying to revitalize the district and create a vibrant place that will echo what’s going on in Assembly Square.”

Plans submitted to Somerville officials say the store will generate 6,260 vehicle trips on weekdays and 10,240 on Saturdays.

In 2005, the furniture giant opened its first Bay State store in Stoughton. A spokesman for the Stoughton Police Department said the opening forced Route 24 to be closed on several occasions, but since then the traffic has been “manageable.”

Patrick Dunford, project manager for Watertown-based Vanasse Hangen Brustlin, which is part of the project team, said VHB has proposed a substantial mitigation plan to reduce traffic impacts. He said a new Assembly Square Drive would become the primary north-south access route through the site extending from Route 28 to Mystic Avenue. In addition, he said several new east-west streets onsite will serve as multiple access points providing access through and around the project.

But Provost, the state representative, is unconvinced.

“People ask me: ‘Will I be able to get to church on Sunday or my kid’s soccer practice on Saturday?'” said Provost. “People feel helpless about voicing their concerns because we all know this project is inevitable.”

Lawrence Paolella, one of the few Mystic View Task Force members who refused to sign the agreement with Federal and IKEA, voiced opposition to the plan.

“The project is dramatically out of scale with Somerville’s size needs and will dampen Somerville’s future,” he told the Planning Board.

But Stephen Mackey of the Somerville Chamber of Commerce spoke forcefully for the project.

“This is the right development in the right place at the right time,” he said.

Robert J. Walsh, vice president for development at Federal, said he expects the entire project will generate $15 million in real estate taxes and create 14,000 new permanent jobs. The IKEA store alone is expected to employ as many as 500 people.

Eric Fang, director of urban design and planning at Street-Works, said the four principal goals of the project are to improve the waterfront access, base the plan on transit-oriented ideas, integrate all the parts of the mixed-use plan and use the streets and public spaces as the backbone that holds everything together.

Doug Greenholz, vice president of real estate for IKEA, said the company remains committed to building a store in Somerville and noted that the furniture store submitted its first letter of intent to buy the property in 1997.

“We are excited about obtaining approvals so we can move forward with Federal in developing this landmark mixed-use project,” he said.

A decision by the Planning Board is expected shortly.