Staff Photo by Dan Henry / The Chattanooga Times Free Press- 2/19/15. Construction on the new Cabela’s in Ringgold, Ga., is progressing on Thursday, February 19, 2015.
FILE – In this Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2016, file photo, statues of wildlife adorn the entrance to a Cabela’s store in LaVista, Neb. Outdoor gear giants Bass Pro and Cabela’s will combine in a $4.5 billion deal announced Monday, Oct. 3, 2016. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik, File)
People fill the lobby as the doors swing open to the 85,000-square-foot Bass Pro Shops Outpost in East Ridge late Wednesday. Outdoor gear giant Bass Pro Shops plans to snap up rival Cabela’s in a $4.5 billion deal announced Monday.
Officials here hope the potential merger between the two big box outdoor stores won’t result in the closure of either the Cabela’s that opened in May of last year alongside Interstate 75 in Fort Oglethorpe or the Bass Pro that opened in July this year in East Ridge alongside Interstate 75 one exit north of Cabela’s.
Both retailers got subsidies in anticipation of the tax revenue and jobs they’d generate: Catoosa County spent $1.5 million on Cabela’s site work, while the city of East Ridge invested substantially more – $6.4 million – in hopes that the new Bass Pro could help reverse the economic fortunes of the city just inside Tennessee’s border.
East Ridge Mayor Brent Lambert said he had heard from Bass Pro that his city’s newly opened store won’t close.
“I’ve already received assurances today our Bass Pro is safe,” Lambert said. “We’ve been assured they’re going to keep operating the way they have, and we look forward to having a great relationship and have them in our community for a long time to come.”
Fort Oglethorpe Mayor Earl Gray thinks Cabela’s will stay open as a store geared toward hunters, while Bass Pro would cater to anglers.
“They’d probably keep both of them open, I would think,” Gray said.
Larry Armour, who developed the Fort Oglethorpe Cabela’s store, agreed.
“I think that Bass Pro will become the fishing and boating store, and Cabela’s will become the store for the hunting and guns and so forth,” said Armour, who runs Armour Commercial Real Estate in Ooltewah. “I think it’ll work well for both of them.”
The Catoosa County Development Authority spent $1.5 million preparing the site for Cabela’s with the expectation that the county would get that money back in sales tax and property tax revenue.
“The county’s going to more than make its money back, even if Cabela’s closes,” Catoosa County Attorney Chad Young said. “Our agreement was that [developer Larry Armour] would guarantee us that the sales and property taxes generated from that entire site – which would be Cabela’s and anything else that might come on the vacant land – over seven years it would pay us back $1.5 million, or the developer would pay us the difference.”