This article was originally published by Don Day in BoiseDev.
Get ready to ride a Ferris Wheel. Inside a sporting goods store.
Scheels will open its newest location at Ten Mile Crossing in Meridian, with a vast store.
The company has eyed the Treasure Valley for several years and recently decided to open in Colorado Springs over the Boise metro due to anincentive package that city handed out.
Scheels will be one of the largest retail stores in the Treasure Valley, with the store format including more than 85 store-within-a-store specialty shops with one-million pieces of inventory. Goods for sale include apparel, sporting goods, shoes, and exercise equipment.
Billed as an entertainment destination, Scheels will also include a 65-foot Ferris Wheel, a 16,000-gallon saltwater aquarium with hundreds of fish, a candy shop, an interactive arcade, sports simulators, and more. An in-house restaurant features soups, sandwiches, homemade fudge, and coffee.
The store dwarfs other sporting goods stores – even the relatively large Cabella’s location in Boise, which is 132,000 square feet versus 240,000 square feet for the Scheels location.
Long-time interest
Scheels has visited the area several times over the years. It says it studied the market for more than a decade. Public records obtained by BoiseDev in 2017 indicated the City of Meridian hosted a site visit for Scheels officials at the time (under the code name “Project Ferris Wheel”) and anticipated the company could invest more than $30 million in the project.
This will be Scheels’ 33rd location, growing out of a hardware store in Minnesota in 1902. The Meridian store will employ more than 400 people and is currently set to open in 2024.
“We could not be more excited to announce Scheels is coming to Idaho,” company CEO Steve M. Scheel said. “Our company has been studying the Boise market for more than a decade and was pleased to find the best possible location for our store at Ten Mile Crossing in Meridian.”
The store will give the Ten Mile Crossing development a major retail anchor. The project, developed by Brighton Corp, SCS, Ball Ventures and Ball Ventures Ahlquist, is a large mixed-use project which includes office, medical, multi-family, and other uses.
“We are excited Scheels has chosen Ten Mile Crossing as the location for their new store,” Brighton’s David Turnbull said. “We believe this speaks to the location and quality of Ten Mile Crossing, and we will continue to see growth in retail, office, residential, and other market segments within Ten Mile Crossing.”
A Ball Ventures spokesperson said the company anticipates making “many more” announcements about the Ten Mile project in the future.
