Here’s an out-of-the-box idea for a vacant big-box store — a model train museum.
The founder of FreightWaves, a company that provides data for the trucking industry, is converting a vacant Cabela’s store near Chattanooga, Tennessee, into the Motion Museum. The project is expected to open next year, FreightWaves CEO Craig Fuller said in social media posts.
Other property developers have repurposed former big-box and mall anchor stores and movie theaters for out-of-the-ordinary uses. RPM Raceway expects to open a go-kart track later this year at a former Sears near Chicago. A former movie theater in Virginia Beach, Virginia, was converted into indoor courts for padel, a sport similar to pickleball. Escape-and-challenge rooms, indoor trampoline parks and other low-cost entertainment attractions have also found homes in vacant big-box properties, CoStar News has reported.
Cabela’s opened the 68,000-square-foot store in Ringgold, Georgia, in 2015, just south of the Tennessee state line. About a year later, Bass Pro Shops opened a new store a mile north on Interstate 75 in East Ridge, Tennessee. Bass Pro acquired rival Cabela's in 2017.
Cabela’s eventually closed the Ringgold location, and Costco Wholesale, which has a store next door, bought the vacant Cabela’s in 2024.
Costco still owned the former Cabela’s building in Ringgold as of March, according to public records. CoStar News could not reach Costco for comment, and Fuller declined to comment.
Earlier this year, Fuller said he had closed financing for the train museum project, which he described as the world’s largest indoor miniature transportation museum. It will feature “one of the most advanced animation projection systems of any museum in the world," Fuller said. All forms of transportation will be included in its displays, not only model trains.
Another model train museum, the EnterTRAINment Junction near Cincinnati, closed in 2025. Fuller’s company acquired its assets.
Fuller has been busy recently with another project in Chattanooga. He and his father, Max Fuller, acquired the Chattanooga Times Free Press from WEHCO Media in July for undisclosed financial terms.
Max Fuller founded the Chattanooga-based trucking company U.S. Xpress in 1985 and sold it in 2023 to Knight-Swift Transportation.
For the record
River Street Architecture is the design architect. Modus Build is the general contractor.