© 2024 WNIJ and WNIU
Northern Public Radio
801 N 1st St.
DeKalb, IL 60115
815-753-9000
Northern Public Radio
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Roscoe Building Project Aims To Create One-Stop Destination For Camping Goods

"Gander mountain gift cards good until May 17th" by Flickr User Doug McCaughan / (CC x 2.0)

Roscoe's Willowbrook Road corridor is fleshing out its retail development with a new Gander Mountain store. It's part of the continuing 20-acre Camping World building project.

Camping World, which sells RVs and campers, purchased the retailer of sporting goods, camping and fishing gear earlier this year. The 42,000-square-foot store will be one of 70 locations set to stay open nationwide.

Roscoe Village President Dave Krienke said the one-stop shop will be a destination point for the community.

"It's right off the interstate, it has great visibility from the road, and I think we're going to see great development as the interchange lights up," he said. "When you have a commercial development out there and people can see that thing at night, they'll start hopping off that interchange and we'll be seeing some great results for us, economically."

It's unclear how many jobs the project will create, but Krienke is hopeful it will allow local workers to stay closer to home.

"Roscoe has been a bedroom community," he said, "so when you have things like this where you create these jobs, people start to work within their own community instead of...at 6:30 in the morning, everybody hops in their car and the community empties out until 5:30-6 o'clock in the evening."

Krienke said the project should break ground late fall.