BY SUSAN BROWN, Times of Northwest Indiana
sbrown@nwitimes.com
HAMMOND | While the state ponders the tax incentives being sought by Cabela's, city officials are linking its potential mega-retail store to the sudden interest buyers are showing toward the Interstate Plaza.
Planning and Development Executive Director Peter Novak Jr. said Thursday the commercial real estate firm in charge of finding a buyer for the property had several written offers in hand even as it planned a national 30- to 45-day marketing blitz.
"(The broker) had three or four offers and was getting ready to accept one of those offers," Novak said in relating a recent conversation with the firm's broker.
Novak said the city is not privy to the identities of those who have made the offers but has been urging the company to contact the city as quickly as possible to make sure the proposals meet the guidelines set by the Redevelopment Commission.
A failure to match the plans of a potential developer to the requirements set by law could kill a deal, Novak said.
Novak said the starting price being asked by the foreclosing bank for the property, where a Kmart was located, is $6 million. The owner of the parcel behind the former Kmart is holding off on further plans until it's clear who buys the Kmart parcel, Novak said.
Novak and Mayor Tom McDermott Jr. said the sudden serious interest by a number of buyers is in stark contrast to 18 months ago, when the city held an option on the property and couldn't find any interest at all.
"All this came about because of Cabela's," Novak said. "I get one or two calls a week from developers from all over the country. That has everything to do with Cabela's."
Novak said critics of Cabela's decision to locate its store at the site of the Woodmar Country Club rather than Interstate Plaza aren't aware the store and its attractions will require 40 acres, the very size of the property at Interstate Plaza.
"Typically around Cabela's, you'll see a hotel, a water park and other dynamic types of retailers," Novak said.
The 93 acres at the country club site will provide room for Cabela's needs as well as the businesses that spring up around the store, he said.
McDermott said during his first year in office that the city could have bought the Interstate Plaza property but wasn't able to follow through because it couldn't find a developer in the country interested in placing a movie theater there.
Officials had expected a movie theater to be a logical central attraction for the site, he said.
The property instead reverted back to the owner and went into foreclosure.
"That's depressing," McDermott said, given the location was the most marketable property in the city.
"This is pre-Cabela's," he said. "There's three serious offers on the table right now. That's because they're saying they want to be close to Cabela's."
The Cabela's deal went into a holding pattern Wednesday when the State Board of Finance postponed a vote on the retailer's $40.7 million financing request.
Cabela's is proposing the state approve a taxing tool, known as sales tax incentive financing or STIF, that hasn't been used in Indiana. Hammond is one of four cities authorized to use the device, however. The city has committed $25 million of its own and an additional $2 million in land needed for access to U.S. 41.
The postponement sends the matter back to the Indiana Economic Development Corp., a quasi-governmental body that advises the board on tax issues. The corporation has been cool to using STIF for retail development.
"The good news is there's outside interest in investing in Hammond," McDermott said Thursday about the interest in Interstate Plaza.
"The only difference is Cabela's," he said.