Cabela’s project postponed in Billings

By Ed Kemmick - 02/01/2008

BILLINGS — Cabela’s Inc. is scaling back its expansion plans, postponing construction of a Cabela’s store that was supposed to open in Billings this year.

A spokesman for Cabela’s, an outdoor outfitter based in Sidney, Neb., said the Billings project is still on the drawing board.

“The folks in Billings will be getting a store,” said John Castillo, a spokesman in Minneapolis.

A press release from the company said that it would be opening only two stores this year, five fewer than announced earlier, and that “current plans call for two additional locations to be opened in 2009.” Asked if that meant the Billings store would open in 2009, Castillo said, “I don’t know, but I assume that is the case.” Site work had begun for an 80,000-square-foot store a little east of South Billings Boulevard off Interstate 90, and Castillo said he didn’t know what steps would be taken to preserve the site for future construction.

The project apparently was going well, however. John Brewer, president of the Billings Area Chamber of Commerce, said he heard from Cabela’s about six weeks ago that the store opening, originally planned for June, had been moved up to late April or early May, and the company was accelerating plans to begin hiring workers.

Company officials had previously said the Billings store, which would be the first in Montana, had plans to hire about 150 part-time and full-time employees.

The Omaha World-Herald reported Thursday that plans were on hold for stores in Billings; Greenwood, Ind.; Wheat Ridge, Colo.; and East Rutherford, N.J., and that Cabela’s would not open a store planned, but never announced, in Union Gap, Wash. The company had already dropped plans for another store, in Georgia.

The newspaper said the two stores planned for 2008 would be built in Rapid City, S.D., and Scarborough, Maine. As if to underscore that commitment, Cabela’s broke ground Thursday on the store in Rapid City, which is to be the same size as the one planned for Billings.

The Billings store was supposed to anchor a retail shopping center called Billings Town Square, which was being developed by Foursquare Properties of Carlsbad, Calif. Foursquare, which acted as the front company for the Cabela’s Billings project, is developing similar shopping centers in Rapid City and Post Falls, Idaho, where a 125,000-square-foot Cabela’s opened late in 2007.

No one with Foursquare could be reached Thursday, but Billings City Administrator Tina Volek said it was her understanding that Foursquare representatives were meeting with Cabela’s officials in Nebraska on Thursday and would be apprising the city of their plans for the rest of the development soon.

Mayor Ron Tussing said the city made no financial commitments to Cabela’s, and Volek said the city had not yet begun any infrastructure work - on sewer and water lines and the like - to serve the Cabela’s site.

In November, the City Council did create a new tax increment financing district in the area of the Cabela’s site, but the city has no financial liability as a result of that, Volek said. The South Billings Boulevard Urban Renewal District is to receive all property taxes collected on new development with the district boundaries for the next 15 to 25 years.

The money would be spent only on public improvement projects within the district, for such things as new or improved streets, curbs, gutters and sidewalks, streetlights and sewer and water lines. The district takes in a mix of commercial and residential property, including a low-income neighborhood.

The press release from Cabela’s said the company was expanding more cautiously because of “an overall challenging consumer environment.” Although the company was expecting revenue to be up 13.9 percent for both the fourth quarter of 2007 and the year, it also said that same-store sales were expected to be 5.9 percent lower in the September-December quarter last year than they were in the same quarter of 2006.

In addition to its worldwide catalog business, Cabela’s has 26 operating stores, which includes eight that opened last year.