Here in Scarborough, it may be the biggest event of the year, possibly surpassing the town´s 350th anniversary celebration this summer, the town manager says. Extra security has been hired. Police will direct traffic. Overflow parking and shuttles will be made available.
Dwayne O´Roak II, an avid hunter in Scarborough, said he hopes to find more outdoorsmen like himself when he shops at Cabela´s, which sells hunting, fishing, camping and related outdoor merchandise in catalogs, online and in stores like the one in Scarborough.
"I like to hunt and fish and I like to go to places where they talk about hunting and fishing," said O´Roak, who hunts for deer and turkey.
Cabela´s decided to put its 125,000-square-foot store in Scarborough because of the state´s outdoor tradition and base of catalog customers in the region.
Like Bean, Cabela´s aims to transform shopping into an outdoor experience. Visitors to the Cabela´s store will be greeted by a two-story "mountain" rising from the floor and covered with trees and wildlife from North America, along with a waterfall that flows into a trout pond.
There´s also a 20,000-gallon aquarium filled with native fish from North America.
The average customer will spend 3 1/2 hours in the store, and half of the visitors will drive from 100 or more miles away, said spokesman John Castillo.
"I like to say Cabela´s is a retail store wrapped around an aquarium, wrapped around a natural history museum," he said. "It´s more than fish hooks and hunting boots. It´s something for the entire family."
Castillo played down Cabela´s location 25 miles south of Freeport, home of L.L. Bean, the outdoors outfitter founded by Leon Leonwood Bean.
"It´s a simple case of us recognizing the strength of the Maine, and entire New England, market and putting a store here. Bean is a fantastic company. We have quite a bit of respect for their history, tradition and operations," he said.
For its part, L.L. Bean said it welcomes healthy competition and hopes that Cabela´s arrival will get more people to head outdoors.
"We´re in the business of encouraging a healthy outdoor lifestyle. In that regard, we welcome Cabela´s to Maine. We think competition is good and it´s a good thing we´re all inducing customers to get outside and enjoy the outdoors," spokeswoman Carolyn Beem said.
The two companies are similar.
Maine-based L.L. Bean, which had $1.6 billion in revenue last year, operates 10 retail stores and 16 outlets and hopes to expand to 32 stores by 2012. Nebraska-based Cabela´s, with $2.4 billion in revenue last year, has 27 retail stores and another three in the works.
L.L. Bean´s 24-hour store in Freeport has long been an attraction itself, with 220,000 square feet of retail space and an indoor trout pond.
Bean also offers kayaking, fly fishing, archery and shooting classes in Freeport. And it´s in the process of coming up with a theme-park-style outdoor adventure center to further cement Freeport´s reputation as a shopping and outdoor destination.
But all the excitement will be in Scarborough later this week. After a series of events for VIPs, the Cabela´s store will open to the public at 5 p.m. Thursday.
Through the weekend, police will be on hand to direct traffic in and around the store, and to monitor traffic at the Maine Turnpike toll plaza near the store. Cabela´s 250 employees will be taking shuttles to the store to make more room in the store´s parking lot.
If the parking lot fills up, then motorists can use shuttles from satellite parking lots at Beech Ridge Motor Speedway in Scarborough.
Shoppers have made reservations at local hotels just so they can be there to shop the opening day sales at Cabela´s, Town Manager Ron Owens said. He anticipates people will park recreation vehicles in the parking lot overnight to be there when the doors open.
Cabela´s also will have some star power in the form of Red Sox Hall of Famer Carl Yastrzemski, pitcher Mike Timlin and "Voice of the Red Sox" Joe Castiglione, along with other sports and outdoor celebrities, in the coming days.
Pete Sterling, a taxidermist from East Waterboro, has created hundreds of mounts for fox, raccoons, wolverines, lynx, otters and fishers for Cabela´s stores over the past three years, but he´d never visited a store until he went inside the one in Scarborough.
Underneath the waterfall, there´s a giant moose standing in the trout pond. Elsewhere in the store there are bears and other creatures.
"It´s quite an ´awe´ factor, ´wow´ factor," said Sterling, who has 20 or 30 mounts of small animals in Scarborough. "It´s a pretty amazing store."
___
Cabela´s http://www.cabelas.com
L.L. Bean http://www.llbean.com
Reader comments
There are not yet any comments. Post your comment and it will appear here.
You must be a registered user of MaineToday.com to post a comment. Register or log in.