The Killeen, Texas City Council may have missed an opportunity to bring around 50 jobs and possibly $40 million in revenue per year to Killeen in a building along Interstate 14 that has been mostly vacant for more than three years.
“What they would like to do is do RV sales, RV service and they also have a retail component and so that fits really nicely in this 52,000-square foot building. They’re going to cut it up and use every aspect of that as well as the parking lot,” Jay Moore said in his pitch to the Killeen City Council on Dec. 8.
Moore, who works for Minnesota-based Oppidan Inc., was at the council meeting to explain a zoning request on behalf of Camping World, a nationwide RV dealer that wants to open a new dealership with retail component in Killeen’s Gander Mountain building, which closed in March 2017, two years after it was built.
Gander Mountain was big news in Killeen when it opened to fanfare in 2015, and perhaps bigger news two years later when it closed. The still-new building has been used since as a seasonal Halloween costume store and, more recently, a temporary furniture store, but Killeen residents and business experts alike have pondered what more the location, along a prime-time business corridor, could become.
Click here to read the whole story from Hunter King in the Killeen Daily Herald.
At the Dec. 8 council meeting, Moore said the Gander Mountain building and parking lot … could become a new RV dealer owned by Camping World; however, it would take a rezoning of the property from a designation of B-3, or local business district, to B-4, or business district, which allows for auto sales, repair work and other uses.