A Nebraska-based sporting goods chain known for its expansive retail showrooms featuring stuffed game animals, running streams and amenities such as trout ponds and indoor archery ranges could be in Newton’s future.

Cabela’s Inc., which last week opened its 15th superstore and has announced 12 additional cities in which it will open stores by the end of 2007, says it has Iowa in its sights.

Locations such as those near the soon-to-open Iowa Speedway in Newton match the retailer’s pattern of anchoring new developments situated near major sporting attractions convenient to interstate highways. Cabela’s has recently located stores near at least two other automobile racetracks – the Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth and the Kansas Speedway in Kansas City, Kan.

“Our retail department is in a very aggressive expansion mode,” said Joe Arterburn, a Cabela’s spokesman. “There is definitely an overall strategy to expand retail, so we are pursuing it actively.” Arterburn said Cabela’s is “interested in the state as a whole,” but it’s “way too early to talk about any specific regions.”

Bryan Friedman, community development director for city of Newton, said the city is “not actively in negotiations with Cabela’s,” but made it clear it would like to be considered.

“With the Iowa Speedway development, the adjoining landowners and developers are working to try to attract big-name retailers,” he said. “When you look at other speedways, such as Kansas City, they have a Cabela’s that has really been successful.”

The Village West retail development next to the 4-year-old Kansas Speedway now has more than 2 million square feet of retail space that attracts more than 10 million visitors a year, said Dennis Hays, county administrator of the Unified Government of Wyandotte County/Kansas City, Kan.

“It’s been an overwhelming success story for us,” Hays said. Cabela’s was the key to attracting Nebraska Furniture Mart, he said, and the two destination retailers created “an economic development engine for success.”

Cabela’s, which reported first-quarter net income of $9.1 million, up from $7.8 million a year ago, has reeled in big incentive packages from the states in which it has located new stores because of their draw as tourism destinations.

In Kansas, for instance, officials issued $250 million in bonds and established a district that uses the incremental revenue from new sales taxes generated to pay off the debt. Hays said the state’s investment leveraged $1 billion in private investment in the area. No property taxes were abated, he said, and the project has allowed county officials to lower the levy there.

In Fort Worth, Texas, officials approved a tax increment finance district that will provide Cabela’s an estimated $30 million to $40 million in tax breaks.

In West Virginia, Cabela’s recently announced it had refinanced a portion of the economic development bonds that generated $53 million in cash for the company, a portion of which it says it will use to pursue further expansion in other states.

Kansas City’s project was clearly worth the incentives, Hays said.

“There’s always this debate of incentives vs. benefits,” he said. “In our case, I can speak with great confidence that the public investments to bring Cabela’s to our community have been a great overall benefit and have helped revitalize the entire area.”