Thanks, but no thanks.
That’s the response Louisville got from Cabela’s Inc. in the wake of the city’s invitation to the hunting and camping goods chain to make Louisville its new home by filling the Sam’s Club building that has sat empty for nearly two years.
“There are many factors that go into site selection and there are other areas that model a little better for a Cabela’s store than Louisville,” company spokesman John Castillo said Monday.
Louisville’s economic development director, Bonnie Star, said she was not surprised by the decision given the amount of empty retail space around the Denver metro area.
“Their answer made a lot of sense,” she said. “They’re interested in the I-70 and I-25 corridors.”
Star said U.S. 36 has about half the traffic volume its interstate brethren carry on a daily basis.
“People in Boulder County will drive to it if it’s in the area and Cabela’s knows it,” she said.
Cabela’s, based in Sidney, Neb., has its only Colorado store in Grand Junction. It has long planned to locate a store in Wheat Ridge, but that deal was scuttled this past summer. That decision opened up the rest of the metro area to potentially play host to the giant outdoor retailer.
Despite the bad news, Star said all is not lost for the former Sam’s Club site at 550 S. McCaslin Blvd. Several investors are interested in buying and possibly dividing the 129,000-square-foot big box for smaller users. There are even a couple of businesses in the 30,000-square-foot range looking at the site.
“There’s a lot more of the 30,000-square-foot tenants than the 129,000-square-foot tenants out there,” Star said. “I’m more hopeful than I was before.”
She said she could envision a rearrangement of the building akin to what happened with Kmart on South Boulder Road, which was filled by a Hobby Lobby and a Big Lots when it closed down several years ago.
But Star said there is a “significant cost” to dividing up the space, and new owners will have to get commitments from tenants in order to land financing. The Sam’s Club, which closed down in January 2010, is listed at $5.95 million.
“No bank is going to give a mortgage on an empty speculative building,” Star said.
Matt DeBartolomeis, vice president for CB Richard Ellis’ retail property services division, said the site his company is representing has a couple of challenges for any buyer. For one, commercial covenants along the east side of McCaslin Boulevard won’t allow for another grocery operation so close to the Albertsons, which is just south of Cherry Street.
Second, the building goes back almost 400 feet while a traditional big box store is closer to 250 feet deep. That would mean less of a horizontal storefront for any newcomer. In the meantime, there are seven empty big box spaces in both Broomfield and Boulder that tenants could look at, he said.
“It would have to be a unique person that can take this,” DeBartolomeis said.
However, market conditions are improving — the number of empty big boxes in the metro area has fallen from 90 early in the year to just over 70 at the end of the third quarter, he said.
“There’s some positive absorption in the (big) box business,” DeBartolomeis said.
And he said CB Richard Ellis has been actively talking to prospects about the Sam’s Club site, though he declined to name any potential tenants.
Councilman Dave Clabots said Louisville is in the difficult position of having to compete with many large retailers in the immediate area, mainly in Boulder and Broomfield.
But he said there may be a market at the Sam’s Club site for an electronics store, which Louisville doesn’t have, or perhaps a dollar store for the more frugal shopper. Whatever it is, he said, the city needs a business than can bring in reliable sales tax revenue as soon as possible, even if what the city receives never equals the $500,000 annually Sam’s Club used to generate.
“When you start to push into the third and fourth year of vacancy, then you’re grabbing at straws,” Clabots said.
Contact Camera Staff Writer John Aguilar at 303-473-1389 or aguilarj@dailycamera.com.