By JOSEPH S. PETE, Daily Journal of Johnson County staff writer
What was to be an inviting gateway to Greenwood on Interstate 65 is now a dirt-covered patch of land about the size of 100 football fields.
After a push to make the city's doorstep more appealing, Greenwood officials don't expect that sight to improve any time soon.
The area was expected to be the location of outdoor retailer Cabela's, which has delayed its plans for a Greenwood superstore for at least two years.
Cabela's officials will meet this week with the company's construction manager to determine what to do with the site, where preliminary earthwork work has been done, S.M. Wilson & Co. senior project manager John Hunter said.
Construction equipment, trailers and stacks of pipe remain on dug-up ground that yielded a harvest of soybeans last fall.
Last weekend, high winds whipped up a dust cloud that hung over homes east of the site for hours.
Tyler Clem, who lives down the street, said the dust was so thick that it resembled a fog.
"I had no idea what was going on," he said. "You could hardly see."
A hundred-acre area of torn-up dirt wasn't what was supposed to greet visitors as they entered Greenwood from the north.
When announcing it would open a Greenwood location, a Cabela's official promised attractive grounds featuring native plants, landscaped areas, walking areas and sitting areas.
The building itself, which would have featured a stone exterior, would have been beautiful on the outside as well as the inside, a company official said.
Since the announcement of Cabela's arrival, city officials have made a push to make the city's interstate corridor attractive. They've banned new truck stops and gas station from locating along the corridor, which they hope would sell the city to new visitors shopping for outdoor gear.
Now the 125,000-square-foot store won't be built for at least two years. Cabela's announced it was slowing down its national expansion plans, building only four stores over the next two years.
Greenwood wasn't one of the locations selected, and yellow bulldozers and heavy construction equipment now sit alone out near the end of an access road.
St. Louis-based S.M. Wilson, the construction manager Cabela's hired, is awaiting the company's direction about what to do, Hunter said.
"Retail's been hit pretty bad, but we've never been shut down in the middle of a job like this," he said. "It's never happened."
In all likelihood, the city won't require Cabela's to do anything with the site, senior planner Bill Peeples said. Until Cabela's moves forward, the city will treat it like any other construction site.
Construction sites are rarely vacant for years, but it's not unheard of, Peeples said.
City inspectors will check the site periodically to ensure that there are no problems with erosion, he said.
As a requirement for the development, Cabela's has posted a $250,000 bond with the city, which Greenwood can use to pay for erosion control that isn't finished as part of the project. The Nebraska-based company posted another $1 million bond to cover dirt and storm sewer work.
Upon completion of the project, Greenwood would return that money to Cabela's.
If the erosion, dirt or storm sewer work isn't done, the city could use that money to make any necessary improvements to the site.
Cabela's hasn't done any paving on the property, so no drainage issues should arise, Peeples said. The site still can absorb rain as well as it could when it was a farm field.
In communications with city officials, Cabela's indicated it was committed to eventually moving forward with the project, redevelopment commission attorney Stephen Watson said.
In an e-mail, a Cabela's official told the city the company would do a budgetary analysis of whether the store would still be viable in its long-term plans, Watson said.
Though Cabela's is on hold, the city will continue with long-standing plans to widen a two-mile stretch of Graham Road that runs along the 102-acre site. Preliminary utility work started last year.
Because of the length of the hiatus, Cabela's is likely to cancel its construction contracts and remove the material from the site, spokesman John Castillo said.