Byline: Dan Culloton Daily Herald Business Writer
Gurnee Mills tried out a new lure Wednesday to catch perhaps the rarest of shopping center fish, and it landed them by the hundreds.
Pickup-truck-driving, steel-toe-boot-wearing outdoorsmen who normally prefer shivering in a dark duck blind to visiting a mall herded into the Gurnee mall early Wednesday morning for the grand opening of Bass Pro Shops Outdoor World.
With a zydeco band in blaze orange vests belting out tunes, mall executives and dignitaries including Gov. Jim Edgar celebrated the arrival of the 133,000-square-foot store as a boon to state and local tourism and tax coffers, as well as a sign of things to come for the giant shopping center and the retail industry.
Shoppers, who surged like stampeding buffalo into the store after Edgar used a fillet knife to cut a ribbon fashioned from fishing line and lures, said it was about time. Many of them have subscribed to Bass Pro's catalog for years and even made regular trips to its Springfield, Mo., mega-store and headquarters. They have eagerly waited for a local store.
'This is fantastic,' said Willy Ballard of Chicago. 'I didn't know that many people fooled around with this stuff.'
So loyal are Bass Pro devotees that they traveled from as far away as Wisconsin, Indiana and downstate Illinois for the opening. Kevin Strange of downstate Clinton said he drove three hours 'to see all the toys.' That's nothing compared to the seven-hour pilgrimages he makes three times a year to Bass Pro's Missouri store.
'We'll come back here,' Strange said, 'because it's shorter.'
They came to explore Bass Pro's wilderness of merchandise, which includes everything from flannel shirts and socks to pontoon boats and hunting guns. They also came to check out the store's attractions, like a restaurant, a giant rock waterfall, a casting pool stocked with fish, a rifle range and an archery gallery with plastic bears and deer that pop up and down.
It's a store that fits in nicely with the mall's efforts to attract more stores that meld entertainment and shopping, like Rainforest Cafe and Planet Hollywood, said Laurence C. Siegel, chairman of the Mills Corp., which owns the mall.
'I've never seen retail and entertainment married together so well,' he said. 'We want to bring more shopertainment to the shopping center.'
Bass Pro expects to draw 3 million to 4 million people a year. The private held company will not release sales figures, but sources say the store could reap $100 million a year or more and state officials predict the emporium to add $390 million to the state's tourism trade.
Store managers consider anyone within 100 miles a local customer, but people have been known to travel hundreds of miles to visit Bass Pro's Missouri location.
'This will be one of the main draws in Illinois,' Edgar said. 'This shop will allow Illinoisans and people throughout the Midwest to take even better advantage of what we have here in Illinois.'
The store targets people 'who have a real passion for hunting and fishing,' said Bass Pro founder Johnny Morris, which is a mainly male demographic. 'A lot of our customers drive pickup trucks,' Morris said.
However, a healthy contingent of women attended Wednesday's opening. Besides fishing poles and guns, the store carries lots of flannel and khaki and even some sportswear apparel that would not be out of place in the office on casual day.
'It's not like I went to a hardware store and I'm looking at hardware,' said Janice King of Wauconda. 'Here they have something for everybody.'
The Gurnee site is a new experience for Morris and Bass Pro. It's his first store in a mall and first in a major metropolitan market.
Morris said he selected Gurnee Mills because of its name as an established shopping destination, its location near the Tri-State Tollway, and because the Chicago market is filled with plenty of sportsmen hungry for a mega-store dedicated to their avocation.
'People here have a real passion for the outdoors,' Morris said.
Gurnee helped out by extending a sales tax sharing arrangement with the Mills Corp. that allowed it make the improvements needed to attract Bass Pro, said Gurnee Mayor Richard Welton.
According to customers, the Chicago market is ripe for a retailer dedicated to the outdoors.
You can find fishing, hunting and camping gear at stores like the Sports Authority, but it's not that chain's main market, said Jackie Green of Round Lake.
'This isn't all the Bulls and the hype and all that,' she said. 'This is just the outdoors.'
Morris said Bass Pro will not open more stores in the Chicago area.
'We don't plan to roll out hundreds of stores,' he said. 'We'd rather have a few quality stores and support them with our catalog.'
