Bass Pro countdown hits high gear
By Marty Roney
The Bass Pro Shops Outdoor World Store in Prattville will open Wednesday night.
PRATTVILLE -- A crowd of 10,000 is expected for a party that starts at rush hour and will no doubt tie up traffic for miles.
Bass Pro Shops opens its new store Wednesday night and Butch Gardner is an outdoorsman ready to spend some cash.
"I've been saving my money up for a year and a half," Gardner said. "Man, this is huge for Prattville, and it's huge for Alabama."
Gardner is speaking figuratively, but huge describes what Bass Pro Shops officially calls the Outdoor World Store. The building, which covers roughly two football fields, is the outdoors brought inside.
There's a two-story waterfall as you walk in. There are two 10,000-gallon aquariums -- one filled with freshwater fish, the other with saltwater swimmers. A stream, complete with footbridges, bisects the store. On nearly every wall is a mural of a nature scene.
Then, of course, there are more than 400 animals, birds and fish that cost $1.5 million to preserve and mount. Many are species there can be found in Alabama.
"We can't wait for our customers to come through the door for the first time," said manager Shane Whittemore. "What they will see will blow them away."
Opening night will be a whale of a party. Festivities kick off at 6 p.m. Special guests include Martin Truex Jr., Bass Pro's NASCAR driver; B.A.S.S. Founder Ray Scott; pro bass fishermen Bill Dance and Jimmy Houston; and former quarterback Ken Stabler, who played for the University of Alabama and the Oakland Raiders. Portions of the first night's sales will be donated to conservation efforts.
In anticipation of the opening, a delegation of city and Prattville Chamber of Commerce officials traveled to Pearl, Miss., where Bass Pro opened a store about two years ago.
Like Prattville, Pearl is located just across the river from a state capital -- Jackson -- and is served by an interstate.
"Pearl officials told us customers started gathering eight to 10 hours before their store opened," said Mayor Jim Byard. "Traffic around the store was at a standstill for the first two weeks. The crowds were so large that Pearl's fire department had to limit the number of people going inside."
Prattville is Bass Pro's 43rd store, including one in Toronto, Canada. And the company, named by Sporting Goods Business Magazine as the nation's No. 1 outdoors retailer, has plans for another dozen locations.
More than 75 million people visit Bass Pro stores annually, according to the company's Web site. That number supports the contention by city and chamber leaders that the store will bring in shoppers from outside the tri-county area.
"Bass Pro is a destination, much more so than a store," said chamber President Connie Bainbridge. "That's going to be a tremendous boost for our existing businesses. Having Bass Pro is a huge calling card when it comes to recruiting new retail interests."
Bass Pro is an anchor for the 900,000-square-foot High Point Town Center, one of two new sprawling shopping malls on the east side of town. The city put together an incentive package that will cost $48 million when the last store opens.
The deal to lure Bass Pro totaled $8 million. To sweeten the pot, most of the revenue collected from a 10 percent sales tax will be rebated to the store, up to a maximum of $29 million.
Byard knows the repercussions of such an investment.
"We had the opportunity to make Prattville the shopping hub north of the river," the mayor said. "I'm not saying Target, Home Depot, Books-A-Million, Dillard's and Kohl's would not have picked Prattville if we hadn't landed Bass Pro. But once we announced Bass Pro, a lot of those companies that were considering Prattville started inking deals."
Bob Sanders doesn't like Prattville spending his tax dollars on Bass Pro or any private enterprise. He thinks Prattville is going to grow -- incentives or not.
Nonetheless, Sanders will be there for the Outdoor World Store grand opening Wednesday night.
"I'm as excited as everyone else about Bass Pro being here," he said. "I'm going to be one of the first customers through the door."
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