Greer may lure major retailer

By John Boyanoski  

FEBRUARY 25, 2010 3:37 p.m. (0)

John Morris founded Bass Pro Shops in 1971 because he was frustrated by the lack of fishing supplies in local sporting goods stores in his hometown of Springfield, Mo.

Now the company operates 56 stores in the United States and Canada, including Charlotte, Atlanta, Myrtle Beach, Macon and Savannah.

And if three Upstate lawmakers have their way, another one will open along Interstate 85 near Greer.

The lawmakers are the main sponsors behind a bill that would provide tax incentives for “extraordinary” retail and tourism projects of at least $50 million.

While the bill says nothing about a specific project, several area leaders have told the Journal the money is to help bring a retail development anchored by a hotel and a Bass Pro Shops somewhere off Interstate 85 near Greer.

Gov. Mark Sanford vetoed a similar incentive plan three years ago for the Bass Pro project as part of a battle against giving incentives to large retailers that would put local businesses under. The Legislature overrode the veto, but nothing has changed in the laws since then.

Sanford spokespeople said the governor would fight legislation if it was indeed being used to land a retail store such as Bass Pro.

However, state Rep. Bill Wylie, R-Greer, who is a main sponsor of the bill with fellow Upstate Republicans Harry Cato and Dan Cooper, said the bill was something they thought up out of the blue and denied it was for a particular project.

“I just felt it was a good idea,” he said.

Larry Whiteley, a Bass Pro spokesman, said he can not comment on possible projects, but said they could still be looking somewhere in the Upstate. He said he fields many calls a week about places where Bass Pro may be relocating.

“Someone sees someone wearing a Bass Pro hat in the mayor’s office and then rumors start,” he said.

Whiteley said the company’s roots are in Morris’ travels to find new equipment, which he brought back to Springfield and sold out of his father’s liquor store, a popular spot for anglers heading to nearby lakes.

Morris began a catalog business in 1974 and opened his first full store in 1975. Fueled by increasing catalog sales over the years, the company began the aggressive construction of its signature retail stores with the first opening in 1997 in Chicago.

Whitely said the company is usually approached by developers, states and/or cities about building a new store.

The vast majority are constructed as parts of mall sites (such as the Concord Mills location near Charlotte), mixed-used developments such as the one outside Jackson, Miss., which has a hotel and baseball stadium built to the land the AA Atlanta Braves affiliate formerly in Greenville in 2005 or as standalone projects that later help draw other retailers, he said.

An average store gets about 3 million customers a year and more than 100 million people shopped in a Bass Pro in 2009, Whitely said.

“That is more than Major League Baseball, NASCAR, Disney World and the NCAA, he said.

The average store is 170,000 square feet, but some are as big as 400,000 square feet, Whitely said. The stores are known for an array of sporting goods as well as being unique to a market.

Bass Pro urges developers to work with local leaders to create a building that matches the natural history of an area such as a sunken ship motif in Miami, a herd of buffalo in an Iowa store and a climbing wall in the Atlanta store.

The Myrtle Beach store includes a large aquarium and faux Spanish moss in the displays.

“They are like a natural history museum for an area,” he said.

Company officials will approve a new store after studying the number of Bass Pro catalog sales, hunting and fishing permits and licenses and customers who visit other Bass Pro stores, Whitely said. He said he could not give out the specific criteria used to select a site.

The proposal was introduced as a prefiled bill in November, and sent to the House Ways and Means Committee, which is chaired by Cooper, in January. It was given a favorable report last week and sent to the full House. It likely will be debated later in session.

The bill calls for unspecified accommodations and sales tax breaks for up to 20 years for a retail store that does $2 million in sales taxes; gets two million visitors; has a $50 million public investment; is located within two miles of an interstate and has an aquarium or natural history exhibit or museum attached to it.

In 2007, Sanford toured the Upstate with area small business leaders trying to fight similar legislation. He said the state was essentially picking and choosing which retailers could get tax breaks and which ones could not.

That bill gave extraordinary retailers a 50 percent refund on sales taxes for 15 years to offset infrastructure costs. According to Sanford, that would have given retailers more than $9 million over their first five years in business, which it could then use to undercut small businesses by offering rebates or special sales on the same merchandise.