If construction activity is any indication, Bass Pro Shops may be entering its golden age. Or, perhaps, re-entering it.
Following the economic downturn, where new construction halted for a couple of years, the Springfield-based outdoor retailer has emerged guns a blazin’ with 17 stores in the works from Alaska to Florida. In all, Bass Pro is working with developers to turn dirt in 12 states through 2015.
The activity parallels the retailer’s run-up of new stores just prior to the recession. In 2007 and 2008, Bass Pro opened 16 stores.
Today, the privately held company operates 56 Outdoor World stores known for their expansive locations fitted with taxidermy, ornate outdoor scenes and murals, and rows of private-label fishing and camping gear.
“We are being more aggressive in new store design and development than we have been for the past two years,” Bass Pro founder Johnny Morris said in an emailed statement after declining an interview on the company’s expansion efforts. “Our new store growth is being made possible by a resurgence in the number of new retail developments and redevelopment projects coming on line around the country. Our accelerated growth is also inspired by the performance of the company.”
Bass Pro spokeswoman Katie Mitchell declined to disclose the retailer’s sales, but Forbes Magazine estimated 2012 sales at roughly $3.92 billion, making it the 99th largest private company in the U.S. Mitchell said Bass Pro is projected to host 120 million people across its 77 properties, including Tracker Marine centers, in the U.S. and Canada in 2013.
Catching onMorris started Bass Pro in 1971 selling fishing lures at his father’s Brown Derby liquor store. With a growing collection of unique lures and fishing accessories picked up from around the country, the venture soon caught on as a catalog business, and in 1981, Morris opened Springfield’s Outdoor World. The store flew the Bass Pro flag solo for 16 years.
In 1997, Morris opened a second store, in Gurnee, Ill., north of Chicago, and in 1998, a third, in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., before the company was off to the races.
Bass Pro opened 20 stores in the next six years before adding seven stores in 2005, five in 2006 and nine in 2007 – a company record for a single year.
Seven ribbon cuttings in 2008 brought the store count to 52, but the company hit the brakes during the next four years with only four stores coming on line. 2010 marked the first year since 1996 that no new stores were added, and Bass Pro also blanked in 2012.
Tackling the taxesThe growth of the company has been fueled, in part, by a willingness among municipalities to offer tax incentives to developers working with Bass Pro Shops with a promise of jobs and tourism, a practice that has raised concerns among taxpayer advocates.
A 2010 study by Buffalo, N.Y.-based Public Accountability Initiative, titled Fishing for Taxpayer Cash, criticized Bass Pro-anchored projects for winning $567.5 million in taxpayer subsidies for its stores – an average of $29 million per development. The study also found the outdoor retailer often failed to deliver on its promises as a tourist destination and economic magnet, citing projects in Bakersfield, Calif.; Cincinnati, Ohio; and Mesa, Ariz., as not living up to their hype.
PAI Director Kevin Connor said his organization – a nonprofit focused on corporate and government accountability – is funded by several foundations, including social-justice supporters The Arca Foundation and The Elbaz Family Foundation, known to help fund environmental and educational causes. He said PAI became interested in Bass Pro’s reliance on public funds a few years back when the retailer was seeking some $70 million to $80 million in public incentives for a development project in Buffalo.
“Bass Pro stores are no silver bullet to economic development,” Connor said. “Though they had won hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies from cities and towns around the country, there was little evidence that benefits from the stores locating in those cities and towns had been realized.”
Bass Pro officials refuted claims of the report after it came out in 2010, saying it was “plagued with factual errors and filled with gross distortions. The authors portrayed that tax abatements and other economic incentives often provided for entire retail developments and supporting public infrastructure as though they were direct subsidies to Bass Pro Shops.”
Bass Pro pulled plans to develop in Buffalo, and Connor said he’s glad local tax dollars weren’t devoted to the private retailer’s plans.
“Given how public budgets are working right now with public services being cut, teachers being laid off and all sorts of cutbacks, it really doesn’t make any sense to throw money at a retail company,” Connor said.
Bass Pro, however, didn’t invent the practice of utilizing public funds to spur development projects. In Springfield, there are currently a dozen community improvement districts established, helping to fund developments such as James River Commons, which is anchored by a Sam’s Club and Academy Sports. Recently, other special taxing districts have come under fire by Greene County officials as developers’ plans have fizzled for Wilson’s Creek Marketplace and Jamestown in Rogersville. (See Springfield Business Journal’s March 18 story, “
Wilson’s Creek Marketplace auctioned off.”)
In Tampa, Fla., Hillsboro County officials have approved $6.25 million in public incentives for a 140,000-square-foot Outdoor World planned there, according to Tampa Bay Times columnist Robert Trigaux. In a Feb. 20 column, he questioned the sense of supporting the “destination retailer” with public funds as it continues to expand. Currently, Bass Pro occupies six locations in the Sunshine state and has plans for five more.
“I’m a fan, even now, of Outdoor World. But let’s be clear. The big buzz to shop Bass Pro Shops is fading. Sampling 12 kinds of ‘Uncle Buck’s’ brand of beef jerky goes only so far,” Trigaux said in the column.
Big attractionsAccording to Bass Pro, its projects typically create around 250 jobs, and customers drive an average distance of more than 50 miles to visit its stores.
Former Bass Pro spokesman Larry Whiteley said in a 2012 interview it is common for Bass Pro and developers it works with to consider incentives, and the positive impact the retailer has on communities justifies the support.
“The reason why the development wants us or the city wants us or the state wants us is because they know that on average we attract more than 3 million visitors per year. Other retailers are looking for where we are going to go,” Whiteley said in an interview about a 120,000-square-foot store being built in Little Rock, Ark. “Why wouldn’t they want to be close to a store that attracts that many people?”[[In-content Ad]]
