Lights are on, but nobody's home — Camping World building in Scott County remains empty a year after completion

Scott County presiding Commissioner Danny Tetley says he has no information on why the Camping World location off Interstate 55 near Cape Girardeau Regional Airport hasn't opened.

The 33,000-square-foot facility on a 12-acre parcel along Nash Road has been, by all appearances, completely finished for well over a year.

"I reached out to the company probably four or five months ago to ask when the store would open and they said they'd not set a date yet," said Tetley, who was elected in August 2022.

A Nov. 22 inquiry by the Southeast Missourian yielded the following response: "We do not currently have information on an opening date."

The company's response to such inquiries seemingly has not changed in the past year.

On Wednesday, Nov. 1, a Southeast Missourian phone call to the Lincolnshire, Illinois, office of Camping World CEO Marcus Lemonis resulted in the following answer from a receptionist: "At this moment, there is no date that is available for the (Scott City) opening."

Tetley said the lack of information is "definitely a mystery."

"It's a great looking building and I hate to see it sit there and not be used. For the benefit of (our) county, I'm very disappointed because we would love to see more retail business to create more revenue and jobs. If Camping World is not going to use it, I wish they'd let us know so we can try to entice some other business to buy it and turn it into something."

Tom Kelsey of Lorimont Commercial Real Estate said he passes the brightly-lit structure every day as he heads home from work.

"(Camping World's) building would be very marketable if the company decided not to use it," Kelsey said. "I've had people call in who've made a market study and noticed the location is vacant and asked me if it was available for sale. It's one of those things where nobody can seem to find out what's going on."

Of note

Camping World opened a location in Branson, Missouri, on May 22, the 191st company dealership in the U.S.

Other Missouri locations are in Columbia, Grain Valley (Kansas City area), Strafford (Springfield area) and Wentzville.

Slowdown

As far back as May 5, 2022, Camping World's Lemonis told rvnews.com that he was cautioning RV manufacturers to slow production to meet retail demand.

"We strongly encourage (manufacturers) to cut their production back to scale to meet and match what retail demand was," Lemonis told RV News, "and in some cases, even withdraw a little bit, so that the inventory that is out there in the system can settle in and then we can get into more of a just-in-time inventory."

Elkhart, Indiana-based Lippert, an RV parts maker, told RV News its April sales were down 37% from the same month in 2022, attributing the decline to a 51% drop in RV wholesale shipments compared to 18 months ago.

"As we navigate through this down cycle, largely driven by recent overproduction within the industry, we remain confident in the underlying strength of the outdoor lifestyle and are seeing continued retail demand coming out of spring shows," president and CEO Jason Lippert told the trade publication. "With the efficiencies we have captured, combined with the continued performance of our diversified portfolio, we believe we are poised to continue our trajectory of strong performance and deliver substantial margin growth when RV OEM (original equipment manufacturer) production recovers."