Ashley and I have spent the past couple of years following the restaurants, businesses and developments changing Williamson County. Few have been more fun to watch than CedarView in Cedar Park.
We drive past it fairly often on the way to Costco, so we have watched the development rise out of the ground in stages. SCHEELS was always the piece our family was most excited about.
We have a 7-year-old and a 9-year-old. Tell them there is a sporting-goods store with a Ferris wheel, aquarium, toys, candy and an arcade inside, and you have basically described their ideal version of shopping.
“After waiting years for SCHEELS to finally open, my first reaction is pretty simple: this place lived up to the hype.”
So when SCHEELS opened on August 29, my son and I went on opening day. Even after following the project for years, I was not prepared for how big, strange and genuinely fun the place would feel.
This is not really a sporting-goods store
The closest comparison is probably Bass Pro Shops, but even that does not quite work. Bass Pro is built heavily around hunting, fishing and the outdoors. SCHEELS has plenty of all of that, including a large hunting and firearms department, but the Cedar Park store feels much broader.
It is sports, fitness, shoes, clothing, toys, camping, tailgating, golf, hunting, home gyms, candy and entertainment inside one enormous building. If your family is more soccer, basketball, gymnastics, running shoes and Vuori than camouflage and bass boats, SCHEELS will probably feel more familiar.
The first floor alone is enormous, with large men's and women's apparel departments and shoe sections on opposite sides of the building. Vuori stood out immediately, along with the number of brands normally scattered across several stores.
Then you go upstairs, and the place changes again.
The toy department is a real destination
One of my biggest surprises was the toy section. Calling it a toy section undersells it. It felt like a small toy store dropped into the second floor of a sporting-goods store.
There is an enormous amount of LEGO, which caught me more off guard than it should have. I expected basketballs, golf clubs, coolers and running shoes. I did not expect to walk into a giant LEGO selection.
Parents should know that before bringing their kids. Between the toys, basketball hoops, home-gym equipment, free weights, coolers, camping gear, grills and tailgating supplies, every turn seems to reveal another department.
The Ferris wheel changes the whole building
The 65-foot Ferris wheel is the centerpiece, sitting in the middle of the store and stretching between both levels. The opening-day line was enormous, so we did not wait to ride it, but the ride changes the feel of the building before you ever get close.
You do not walk in and think, “I am at a sporting-goods store.” You walk in and wonder what kind of place this is.
For families with younger kids, the Ferris wheel alone will turn an ordinary shopping trip into an outing. That is the pattern throughout the building: SCHEELS did not just build racks and shelves. It built things children will ask to come back and see.
There is an aquarium overhead, wildlife in the middle and a dinosaur nearby
The aquarium may be my favorite part. SCHEELS says it holds 16,000 gallons of saltwater, but the number does not explain what it feels like to walk beneath it while fish pass overhead through sections that arch across the walkway.
Nearby, a large wildlife display wraps around an elevated landscape in the middle of the building. Bears, deer, eagles and smaller animals become part of the store’s architecture, much like the nature displays at Bass Pro Shops but built vertically into the center of the space.
Then there is the giant animatronic T. rex. It is not full-size, but it is theatrical enough to feel more at home at a theme park than in a retail store in Cedar Park.
Upstairs, Fuzziwig's Candy Factory had a line just to get inside on opening day. Ginna's Café is downstairs, and we will save both for a less crowded visit.
The gun section is basically its own store
We are not big gun shoppers, so I cannot give you an intelligent review of the selection. But visually, the firearms area was one of the more impressive departments in the building.
It is separated from the rest of the store with its own entrance, and it almost feels like another specialty store inside SCHEELS. That is the pattern throughout the building: instead of one giant homogeneous floor, you keep moving between areas that feel almost like individual shops.
The store is built to make opening-day crowds manageable
I expected parking to be a nightmare. It was not.
The surface lot in front of SCHEELS is enormous, and even on opening day it added only a couple of minutes to finding a spot. We did not need the garage or anything complicated. We parked out front and walked in.
Checkout was the other surprise. The line looked long, but it moved remarkably fast. I did not buy anything that day, but based on the pace, I would have been surprised if checkout took more than five minutes.
That may change as CedarView fills in around the store, but the first visit was considerably easier than I expected.
SCHEELS is only the first piece of CedarView
It is easy to look at SCHEELS and see a large new store. The bigger story is what surrounds it.
SCHEELS is the first major piece of CedarView, a 117-acre development behind the H-E-B Center near New Hope Drive and 183A. Nebraska Furniture Mart is building next door, with plans describing a retail store of more than 500,000 square feet, a larger warehouse and parking structures.
A full-service Marriott hotel and convention center is also under construction. Current plans describe a 297-room hotel connected to roughly 46,000 square feet of event and meeting space, with completion expected in 2027.
Restaurants are beginning to arrive as well. J. Alexander's has announced its first Cedar Park location at CedarView, and more commercial space is still coming.
That is why SCHEELS feels bigger than another major store opening. It is the first visible sign of a new part of Cedar Park taking shape.
Why this matters for Cedar Park
Retail is part of Cedar Park’s growth, but the business side may be even more interesting. Firefly Aerospace has continued expanding its Cedar Park headquarters and spacecraft operations, drew a $50 million investment from Northrop Grumman and completed its initial public offering in August 2025.
The city is also pushing deeper into aerospace and defense, including a new accelerator focused on those industries. At the same time, CedarView gives residents and visitors more reasons to spend time here rather than drive elsewhere.
SCHEELS sits in the middle of those two changes. It is a destination for families now, and a sign of what this part of Cedar Park may become as the rest of CedarView opens.
My son got the first trip. His sister has not been yet, which I have been informed is an outrage that will be corrected soon.
They are entering the years when sports will become a bigger part of our lives. We already have soccer and gymnastics. Baseball, basketball, shoes, gear and all the other things kids suddenly need are probably next.
But even if none of that were true, they would still want to come back. There is a Ferris wheel, an aquarium, candy, LEGO and a dinosaur.
I am pretty sure we have already lost that argument.
Updated September 22, 2026 to reflect substantive changes.
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