Cabela's project moving ahead, slowly

HAMMOND | Cabela's is creeping forward with its plan to build a mega retail store on the former Woodmar Country Club site in Hammond.

The Nebraska-based company is "doing legwork and site work" for the proposed store, Peter Novak, executive director of Hammond's Department of Planning and Development, said Friday.

And two contractors with Cabela's "on their resumes" each have applied for and received licenses to do work in the city after taking a test and filing all the necessary paperwork, said Hammond Building Commissioner James Callahan.

Although the project appears to be slowly moving forward, months of negotiations between Cabela's and the state have yet to produce a decision on how the state might provide financial incentives to the outdoors outfitter.

Cabela's wants the incentives to help fund $40 million in infrastructure improvements in exchange for building the $95 million project in Indiana and bringing in millions in dollars in tax revenue to the Hoosier state.

"We've reeled in Bass Pro Shops, and we hope to reel in Cabela's," Daniels said Friday at a town-hall-style meeting on his Toll Road privatization plan in Crown Point.

"They will be the first two retail operations of any kind, anywhere in Indiana, to get this kind of assistance from the state," he said. "We have one in the net, and we're working hard on the other."

After hearing Daniels' comment, Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr. said, "I hope the governor brings them into the boat."

McDermott said he has seen two site plans for the Cabela's project. The one McDermott said he believes most likely will be followed, places the 150,000-to-250,000-square-foot store on the footprint of a demolished country club building. Its front would be visible from Indianapolis Boulevard and Interstate 80/94, and its back side would face the adjacent neighborhood along Northcote Avenue, he said.

"The other has the store on the back of the property, and that doesn't make sense," he said.

Last week, Cabela's spokesman James Powell said the company "still has plans to put the store there."

Powell couldn't be reached for comment Friday but repeatedly has said Cabela's didn't spent $14 million to buy the nearly 100 acres if it didn't intend to build a store there.

"We bought the property to put a store there, and we intend to do so," Powell has said.

Times Business Writer Keith Benman contributed to this report.