SAY NO TO OUTDOORS RETAIL SUBSIDIES

State may STIF Cabela's financing request
Dec. 6, 2005

BY PATRICK GUINANE
pguinane@nwitimes.com
317.637.9078

INDIANAPOLIS | Cabela's may not build in Hammond, the outdoors superstore said Monday, after a key state panel reaffirmed opposition to the company's $40.7 million financing request. The project seemed to take on new life last week, when the State Board of Finance granted Cabela's more time to negotiate with the Indiana Economic Development Corp. But on Monday, a spokesman for the IEDC said talks will not include sales tax increment financing. "The IEDC is not going to recommend to State Board of Finance that STIF financing be used for the Cabela's in Northwest Indiana," corporation spokesman Weston Sedgwick said. "It's been our position, for the most part all along, that this would not be a good use of tax dollars for the state of Indiana."

While the IEDC makes a recommendation, the State Board of Finance has the final vote. "Certainly we're disappointed that the IEDC sees it that way, but we hope the board will look at it a little more deeply," Cabela's spokesman David Draper said Monday. And if not? "If the STIF doesn't go through, we're going to have to rethink our plans for the property," Draper said of the 93-acre Woodmar Country Club site, a $14 million purchase. "It's not to say we won't build there, but we're going to have to go back to the drawing board to see if it makes financial sense."

The state has never approved sales tax increment financing, though Hammond is among four communities allowed to consider the economic development tool. "Unfortunately for Indiana, this is the approach that's been taken by the IEDC, that STIF should not be used for retail; I don't agree with that," Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr. said. "We're a border town. I live right next to Illinois. Wouldn't it be horrible if Cabela's abandoned their store in Hammond and opened its second store on the South Side of Chicago?"

Sedgwick said the IEDC still could consider other incentives, such as payroll credits and employee training grants. The IEDC's renewed stance against STIF comes days after Cabela's said it will build a Hoffman Estates store with up to $20 million in government assistance. Hammond has offered to finance $25 million of the $94 million project. Cabela's Draper says he doesn't know how much more the state will have to contribute. "There is a line," he said. "I don't know what that line would be."