We were giving them a lot. I’m sure you can look it up. The number $54 million is in my head though. That was coming from state and local.
http://www.buffaloniagara.org/Home/Latest_News/BuffaloWaterfrontBassPro
Springfield, Mo.-based Bass Pro is certainly not the project’s only component, but it is nonetheless an important one. The oft-called destination retailer has a reputation for turning around blighted areas by prompting other shops, restaurants and even hotels to follow on its coattails. People drive hundreds of miles to Bass Pro stores to shop, eat and view museum-quality animal reproductions and to see vintage hunting and fishing gear on display. The proof lies some 130 miles east, in the Finger Lakes region of Auburn, N.Y. A comparatively smaller Bass Pro store opened in June of last year to much fanfare and hype. The once-dying Fingerlakes Mall that the 85,000-square-foot store calls home and the surrounding area are both now booming.
Just five years ago the occupancy rate at Fingerlakes Mall hit an all-time low, dipping below 50 percent. Now it is 80 percent and rising. Thirty new retailers and eateries have joined the mix there, including national retailers PacSun and Aeropostale. And overall sales are up 20 percent, with some areas enjoying even higher jumps. Food court sales, for example, have spiked between 50 and 60 percent, while some national chains are up roughly 40 percent. Mall officials estimate that foot traffic has doubled to 2 million a year.
“Bass Pro was pretty much the single tenant we had targeted as being the one that could turn the property around,” said Greg Greenfield, president of Atlanta-based Greg Greenfield & Associates, which represents a group of investors that owns the mall. “We thought it was going to be somewhat of a long shot, but it turned out to be the grand-slam home run, highest-impact tenant in the whole universe.”
Bass Pro draws customers from 100 miles and beyond, he says - not bad for a mall that previously drew them from the immediate Auburn area, which is part of a county of just 81,900 residents.