South Dakota’s second largest city is seeing the first affects of stifled growth;

Cabela’s, the development’s first retail anchor, seemed likely to spur the growth of the 500,000-square-foot project by luring shoppers and traffic to the area.

But while the 80,000-square-foot outdoors megastore opened in August 2008, the rest of the development north of Interstate 90 and west of Exit 61 is only sod and weeds.

See what they are talking about here.

6 Thoughts on “Retail growth coming to a halt in Rapid City

  1. Ghost of Dude on February 9, 2009 at 7:41 am said:

    That whole development was built in a place that isn’t really easy to get to. I think the sporting goods stores overestimated their demand in RC. They now have a big Scheel’s store and Cabela’s. I’ve also heard rumors about a Bass Pro Shops store there.
    Meanwhile, the tourists who come into town are looking for hotels, restaurants, and arts and crafts shops.

  2. F’ck Cabela’s! A few years back Jim Hightower wrote about how they are one of the biggest government mooches in the country. They go around and convince taxpayers to spend millions to build infrastructure to there tacky stores than turn around and hire like 20 people in return and pay them $8 an hour. They did it in Mitchell and Rapid City.

  3. Ghost of Dude on February 9, 2009 at 10:44 am said:

    They actually hire quite a few more people than that. But yeah, the tax incentives they get to ove in a lot of places are just ridiculous – which is why they usually move into smaller towns.

  4. Yeah, Hightower rips them to shreds. He says they sucker cities (Rapid City for instance) into believing there will be all this retail growth around the Cabela’s when it is built, and it never happens. It also hurts business in the city. I guess Cabela’s in Mitchell has actually hurt tourism DT.

  5. Ghost of Dude on February 9, 2009 at 1:14 pm said:

    I’m sure it has. There’s a wal-mart, a huge Menard’s, and a strip mall all out by the interstate where Cabela’s is. Nobody needs to go into town now.
    Welcome to the wonderful world of sprawl, Mitchell.

  6. Isn’t it A-MAZE-ING!

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