Cabela’s project in Hammond still has life

Indiana’s economic development agency is willing to break precedent to help bring two huge outdoor stores to Northwest Indiana, a state official said Friday.

But Hammond’s mayor is still worried.

Nathan Feltman, vice president of the Indiana Economic Development Corp., said his agency is actively encouraging Cabela’s and Bass Pro Shops to locate in Northwest Indiana.

The one-year-old IEDC has not offered economic assistance to retail developments before, but Cabela’s and Bass Pro Shops are different.

“We have come to the conclusion that in both cases, the state is willing to provide some economic help,” Feltman said.

He would not say which economic development “tools” the state is proposing to use.

But he said — as Gov. Mitch Daniels did Thursday, in a talk in Hammond — that sales-tax increment financing is not one of them. With STIF, part of the new store’s sales taxes would help pay for new public infrastructure, such as roads.

That stance makes Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott concerned.

“Barring sales-tax financing, I don’t know of any other tools that could bring Cabela’s,” he said Friday.

He also said his Cabela’s contacts tell him that Indiana has not been talking with the company recently.

“I know Cabela’s isn’t feeling the love from Indiana,” he said.

But Cabela’s spokesman Joe Arterburn said Friday that the company is still talking with both the state and the city, and the Hammond site is “still very much on the drawing table.”

Cabela’s has proposed building a “destination retail” store on the former Woodmar Country Club site in Hammond.

It is reportedly asking the state for $40 million worth of economic incentives.

Bass Pro Shops has announced plans to build a “megasize” outdoor store at the AmeriPlex at the Port business park in Portage. It has sought some help also, Feltman said, but not nearly as much as Cabela’s. The AmeriPlex site does not require the infrastructure development that Woodmar does. Both stores would attract many customers from outside Indiana, Feltman said.

He added that when Daniels said Thursday that the state doesn’t “do retail,” he meant that the state will not provide incentives for retail development — “except in extraordinary circumstances.”

Feltman said the state has ruled out sales-tax financing because its analysis shows that the tax income from the superstores’ new customers would not compensate for the revenue lost from customers of existing stores that would close.

Cabela’s has relied on sales-tax financing for several of its new store developments, including a recently announced project in Hoffman Estates, Ill.

But Feltman noted that Bass Pro Shops didn’t use that when it built a Clarksville, Ind., store — the company’s largest store east of the Mississippi River — recently.

Feltman said that the IEDC helped create nearly twice as many jobs in 2005 as its predecessor state agency did in 2004 but committed less state funds.

“We’re trying to win opportunities but give away as little as possible,” he said. “It’s just good business.”