Cabela's Corporate Sidney (Valley, Allen: home, shops, suburb)

[WyattE]

Since Cabela's is merging with Bass Pro Shops, what is the current status of Cabela's store and Corporate office in Sidney? Staying or going? Nice little town. I would be sad if Cabela's shut down there.

[Carolina Knight]

The latest I have read is Bass Pro Shop's acquisition of Cabela's is being delayed by the Federal Trade Commission. All but one future store Bass Pro Shops has announced have been placed on hold.

[2nd trick op]

My "second" home town of Topton, PA went through a similar trauma when Caloric (a major producer of gas kitchen ranges), was acquired by Raytheon, and production was offshored. Topton rebounded nicely, so much so that I haven't heard the event mentioned there save in one or two conversations I had initiated.

But Topton lies in Southeastern Pennsylvania -- the most prosperous corner of the state, and is within a half-hour's drive of both Reading and the Lehigh Valley (Allentown/Bethlehem), and both of those metros have a population in excess of 200,000 and a diversified industrial base. So a different set of rues would likely apply.

I expect that the desires and attitudes of the locals will likely carry more weight than would otherwise be the case; in no small part because of the rural orientation of the specialty market involved. New hires at the corporate level, especially if they're young and single, aren't going to be pleased with the isolation at Sidney, but Cabela's two major distribution canters are in communities generally viewed as "semi-rural," (near Wheeling and Dubuque) while the catalog order center is in a suburb of Salt Lake City. And Cabela's maintains a large retail outlet in Hamburg, PA (pop 4500) at an interchange of I-78 (might be considered a "suburb" of Reading). So there's plenty of latitude here to work things out, and I don't think too many people are going to be hurt in the long run.