The store is scheduled to open Sept. 21. Four hundred employees have already been hired for the store. The Cabela's will have outdoor sporting products in addition to a 16,000-gallon aquarium, museum-like dioramas and other wildlife displays and a two-story Conservation Mountain with waterfalls, a stream and a trout pond. "I like to say it is a retail store wrapped around a museum, wrapped around an aquarium," the spokesman says. The store will also have a restaurant, two conference rooms, laser arcade, indoor archery range and dog kennels for customers to leave their dogs while they shop.

Cabela's chose Hoffman Estates for its first Chicagoland location because it is a "premier retail spot," the spokesman says. "It has high visibility, strong traffic patterns from either direction and, most importantly, it is located in an up and coming tourist and shopping destination area." The store will be located in the Prairie Stone Business Park, a 780-acre business park at I-90 and Route 59. Also located in the park is the Sears Centre Arena, which has seating for up to 11,000 people and hosts more than 100 events a year such as concerts and sporting events such soccer, lacrosse and football. The Sun Island Hotel Water Park will also be constructed there.

The location is expected to have four million people visit the store annually, the spokesman says. The number of visitors is estimated based on current customers in the area for Cabela's website and catalogue in addition to the area's population density. The Hoffman Estates location is part of a nationwide expansion planned for this year. The Sidney, NE-based company, which has typically concentrated its stores in the Midwest, plans to open seven additional new stores this year in Hoffman Estates; Gonzales, LA; East Hartford, CT; Hammond, IN; Reno, NV; Post Falls, ID; and Lacey, WA. Stores are additionally planned to open next year in Greenwood, IN and Scarborough, ME.