Bass Pro Shops snags Little Rock

After nine years of knocking on the door, Little Rock, Ark., is answering Springfield-based outdoor retailer Bass Pro Shops.

The company in mid-June announced plans to open an Outdoor World in Little Rock, a capstone of attempts to enter the market dating back to 2003.

The Arkansas store is slated to anchor the 169-acre Gateway Town Center development near the interchange of interstates 30 and 430. Developer Tommy Hodges said he had been in talks with the megaretailer prior to Bass Pro’s failed efforts to open a store in North Little Rock, Ark.

The nearly 150,000-square-foot store, which would be No. 61 for Bass Pro, is expected to be complete by the end of 2013, according to the retailer.

“We have been hoping for a store in Little Rock for a long time, and thanks to Tommy Hodges, we believe we have found the best location possible,” Bass Pro Shops founder Johnny Morris said in a news release.

Hodges, who is planning a 30-acre outlet mall next to the 30-acre Bass Pro site, said the recently inked deal has been a long time coming.

“We’ve had some startups and some setbacks,” Hodges said, declining to disclose project costs. “We started this in 2003, and it just didn’t work out.”

Hodges said Bass Pro decided at the time to pursue a North Little Rock site, acknowledging that public financing was attached to the alternative deal. Proposed tax-increment financing for the North Little Rock project drew resistance from city officials and residents, stalling the project. It appears a lawsuit filed in December 2007 by two Arkansas residents worried that wetlands would be harmed by the construction served to eventually kill Bass Pro’s plans.

Six months ago, Hodges resumed talks with Bass Pro officials for the Little Rock store, which is designed with an underwater-themed bowling alley and restaurant.

Bass Pro spokesman Larry Whiteley said public financing was not part of the deal with Hodges, and the economy, as much as other factors, slowed the company’s plan to put its first Outdoor World in Arkansas.

“The economy has been a big factor. It has slowed down a lot of people,” Whiteley said. “We’ve been opening stores; we’ve just been one or two at a time instead of 10 at a time when the economy was going strong.”

Bass Pro opened two stores in 2011 and does not have any openings scheduled this year. Whiteley said three stores are planned to open in 2013.

Taxpayer aid
Bass Pro Shops has a history of seeking public financing to support construction and infrastructure costs when it enters new markets.

A decade ago, Bass Pro officials began signing development agreements with municipalities or developers who agreed to finance new store construction and infrastructure improvements usually totaling $20 million or more. The deals directed a combination of Bass Pro rent and portions of the city’s sales taxes derived from the developments to pay down the city’s or the developer’s debt.

According to Springfield Business Journal archives, six of the nine projects Bass Pro was working on in 2005 were aided by public dollars, such as the $24 million in financing incentives that came with its Outdoor World project in Broken Arrow, Okla.

The Bass Pro name carries its own weight, and cities, such as Memphis, Tenn., have been happy to accommodate. In November 2010, Advertising Age named Bass Pro Shops among the Hottest Brands in America, alongside Old Spice, M&M’s, Droid and iPad.

Bass Pro currently is developing store No. 59 in Colorado Springs, Colo., and store No. 60 in Memphis, Tenn. While the company’s plans gained $30 million in public financing support connected to redevelopment of the Memphis Pyramid, El Paso County commissioners in Colorado rejected a March 2011 request to use public funds near Pikes Peak, according to the Colorado Springs Business Journal.

Whiteley said 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,” Whiteley said. “Other retailers are looking for where we are going to go because why wouldn’t they want to be close to a store that attracts that many people.

“The cities know that more hotels and convenience stores and everything else are going to surround the development. That means more jobs; that means more taxes. … They are anxious to get us because we are an attraction as well as a retail store.”

A 2010 study by New York-based Public Accountability Initiative, titled Fishing for Taxpayer Cash, criticized Bass Pro for winning $567.5 million in taxpayer subsidies for completed stores – an average of $29 million per project. The study also stated the outdoor retailer often failed to deliver on its promises as a tourist destination and economic magnet.

Bass Pro officials refuted the claims of the report, 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.”

In June 2010, Bass Pro signed a 55-year lease with the city of Memphis to operate an Outdoor World within the Pyramid, the city’s iconic yet vacant downtown arena. While the city is helping to cover construction costs, Bass Pro agreed to pay $880,000 in rent for the first year and annual payments of at least $1 million, depending on sales, through the remainder of the lease.

Whiteley said Memphis city officials June 21 held a construction kick-off ceremony attended by Morris. The store, which has been in the works for seven years, will recreate a Delta cypress swamp and other water features, he said. The construction has been delayed recently because the city has performed seismic reinforcement of the structure.

The Colorado Springs project features a 117,000-square-foot store at the planned 200-acre Copper Ridge retail development. Whiteley said both projects are moving forward and are expected to open next year.

Bass Pro advantage
Hodges, who is seeking hotels and restaurants to round out the Gateway Town Center’s tenant mix, said with the Bass Pro agreement in place, other companies may now have an interest in moving forward. He also said he would not rule out public assistance or tax incentives as part of the full development in the future.

“We did some things for John; he did some things for us, and I’ll leave it at that,” Hodges said on landing Bass Pro.

At the $420 million Branson Landing outdoor shopping center on Lake Taneycomo, developer Rick Huffman agreed in 2003 to spend $15 million to build the Bass Pro store, a 16-slip marina and the White River Fish Co. floating restaurant in exchange for Morris signing a 27-year lease.

Bass Pro currently operates 10 stores within a 300-mile radius of Springfield, including the Mecca Outdoor World at Campbell Avenue and Sunshine Street. According to Whiteley, the presence of nearby stores has not diminished the lure of Springfield’s 400,000-square-foot store, which he said steadily attracts roughly 4 million visitors per year.

The company, which Morris started in the early 1970s behind a bait counter at his dad’s Brown Derby liquor store, projects 113 million people will visit its stores this year in the U.S. and Canada. According to Forbes, Bass Pro recorded $3.83 billion in 2011 revenues, ranking it No. 93 on the magazine’s list of the largest private companies in America.