With rural Nevada focusing on adventure tourism and Scheels offering hunting, fishing, camping and boating products in an area roughly the size of seven football fields, the company seems to be made for the area.

That's just what city officials in Sparks are thinking, too. And that's why they're forging ahead with a financing plan that would require a thumbs-up from the Nevada Commission on Tourism in a procedure that is as new as the proposal itself.

Scheels is the centerpiece of a major retail tourist attraction on the drawing board for Sparks, a city of about 85,000 just east of Reno.

But there's more to the development known as the Legends Project at Sparks Marina.

There's a restaurant concept called T-Rex. Maybe you heard about the opening of the first T-Rex in Kansas City, Kan., in the summer. Developed by Minnesota entrepreneur Steve Schussler, who created the Rainforest Café franchise, T-Rex uses animatronic dinosaurs to draw crowds.

The Houston-based Landry's restaurant chain, which now operates downtown Las Vegas' Golden Nugget property, was so impressed with T-Rex that it bought an 80 percent interest in the concept. (Landry's also owns the Rainforest franchise as well.)

After Schussler Creative Inc. opened the first T-Rex at the Legends at Village West, it now has its eye on a more high-profile center of tourism for its second restaurant — Downtown Disney in Orlando.

And then Sparks.

The site in Sparks is an old gravel pit that was inundated in a flood of the Truckee River years ago. The city eventually turned the area just off Interstate 80 into a small park with picnic tables, beaches and a lake frequented by kayakers and canoeists.

The lake is part of a 100-acre site that would be home to a collection of retailers.

Among the retailers that have signed on to the Sparks project besides Scheels and T-Rex are Cantina Corona, Brooks Brothers and More, Dave & Buster's, The Saddle Ranch Chop House, Pin-Up Bowl, Off Broadway Shoe Warehouse, FreedomRoads and Camping World.

In all, 1.4 million square feet in retail space is planned for the project.

Another possible component of the project is the construction of a baseball stadium. A Northern Nevada group is attempting to spur interest in bringing a Triple-A baseball franchise to the area. That's the same level of play we have at Cashman Field with the Las Vegas 51s.

Coordinating the entire Legends at Sparks Marina project is RED Development LLC, which has corporate offices in Kansas City, Mo., and Scottsdale, Ariz. RED put together Legends at Village West near the Kansas Speedway and the synergistic relationship between the retail center and the track draws high numbers of people.

The unusual collection of retailers caught the attention of a young gaming company based in Las Vegas.

"We had been looking at the Northern Nevada market for several years and looked at several sites in Reno," said D.C. Graham, chief marketing officer of Olympia Gaming.

"In doing our research and diligence, we were able to uncover this project and we struck up a relationship with RED. Originally, they weren't even considering a hotel component," he said.

But now they are.

Olympia has proposed building a $500 million, 1,000-room hotel-casino at the site. The 12-acre project would include a 55,000-square-foot casino, five restaurants, a high-end spa, fitness center and salon, a private beach and a swimming pool, a convention center and a lakefront amphitheater and water show.

The hotel would be built in phases with only 500 rooms going in initially.

Olympia is the same company that expects to break ground in Las Vegas early next year on the $2 billion Southern Highlands Casino Resort. The company already owns Casino Fandango in Carson City.

"We've been able to have a pretty good success story and have a good relationship with Carson," Graham said. "We hope to see the same thing occur in Sparks."

But while Olympia has a good rapport with the City of Sparks and with RED Development, company officials have to watch from the sidelines to see whether the Legends at Sparks Marina project moves forward.

The city is seeking permission to develop the project as part of a tourism improvement district that could be formed if city officials prove that more than half the sales that would be generated by retailers in the area would come from people from outside of Nevada. It's called a "preponderance finding" and members of the Nevada Commission on Tourism must decide whether they think most of the business would come from tourists from out of state.

RED Development has hired experts to convince commissioners that the finding would be met. If it is, the city would be eligible to build the project with sales tax anticipation revenue bonds — STAR bonds.

All the principal partners in the project say STAR bonds are critical to get Legends built. But the Commission on Tourism has sailed into uncharted waters on the project. While members of the commission are experts in the industry, how are they going to know whether most of the sales generated are going to come from tourists and whether those tourists are coming from out of state?

RED's experts explained their calculations for determining the preponderance finding and there was an air of skepticism in the room when they said the Sparks project could draw as many as 3 million visitors a year — quite a claim, considering the Reno-Sparks Convention and Visitors Authority estimates the area now draws about 5 million people a year.

The experts also admitted that they expect the project would barely meet the preponderance finding, leaving commissioners asking about what, if anything, would happen if it turns out that less than half the sales tax generated comes from out-of-state visitors.

Nevada Commission on Tourism Executive Director Bruce Bommarito said his staff had questions about what other retailers are in the mix for the Sparks Marina project. Scheels is clearly committed to the project and even has renderings of the proposed Sparks store on its Internet site, noting a 2008 opening date.

Other retailers have made public announcements and Olympia has issued press releases about its plans.

The commission is expected to meet again within a month to resolve the questions.

In the meantime, Olympia officials can only watch and wait.

"It's RED's project," Graham said. "We wouldn't receive any benefit from the STAR bonds because our project is independent of the marina proposal. But we're happy that they want us there."