Why Have So Many Cities and Towns Given Away So Much Money to Bass Pro Shops and Cabela's?
BOSSIER CITY, LA – When Bill Winkler opened his small archery shop, he was prepared to compete against businesses large and small – but not against a government-financed competitor. "The day Bass Pro opened here in Bossier, the number of arrows I sold dropped off by 50 percent," says Winkler.
Why Have So Many Cities and Towns Given Away So Much Money to Bass Pro Shops and Cabela's?
Atlantic Cities
BOSSIER CITY, LA – When Bill Winkler opened his small archery shop, he was prepared to compete against businesses large and small – but not against a government-financed competitor.
"The day Bass Pro opened here in Bossier, the number of arrows I sold dropped off by 50 percent," says Winkler.
A Bass Pro Shop opened in Bossier City in 2005 after city officials promised to give the retailer $38 million to pay for the construction of the 106,000-square-foot store in this Red River community.
Such deals are commonplace.
Both Bass Pro Shops and its archrival, Cabela’s, sell hunting and fishing gear in cathedral-like stores featuring taxidermied wildlife, gigantic fresh-water aquarium exhibits and elaborate outdoor reproductions within the stores. The stores are billed as job generators by both companies when they are fishing for development dollars. But the firms’ economic benefits are minimal and costs to taxpayers are great.
An exhaustive investigation conducted by the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity found that the two competing firms together have received or are promised more than $2.2 billion from American taxpayers over the past 15 years.
