A bucket full of filled-out job applications sits in Stephanie Fitt’s office at Legends retailer OshKosh B’Gosh. The store was one of the 24 to open at the Sparks Marina on Thursday, giving jobs to more than 700 people.

And while OshKosh has filled its 11 open positions, Fitts said she will keep that bucket around for a while.

Unemployment in Nevada hit 11.3 percent in May, setting an all-time high for the state. The northern Nevadans who are part of that statistic came out in droves to the Legends job fair on May 7 at John Ascuaga’s Nugget.

Fitts said she found all but one of her employees in the flood of 5,000-plus applicants who descended on the fair.

“The jobs created by this development, along with the new goods and services provided, will help to strengthen a weak economy as well as bring long-term economic benefits to Sparks,” Sparks Mayor Geno Martini said in April 2008, after a university-sponsored study on Legends was released.

The study, done by the University of Nevada, Reno Center for Regional Studies and Meridian Business Advisors, forecasts a $415 million annual economic footprint on northern Nevada from Legends, touting an estimated 4,400 jobs created spanning both construction and retail trades.

But according to Legends general manager, Dennis McGovern, at least a year will have to go by before some of those estimated numbers can be equated with real dollars and cents.

McGovern said that the almost 2-million square-foot retail resort will track the statistical sales per square foot, evaluated on a store-by-store basis.

“That is an annualized number because of the seasonality (associated with retail),” McGovern said. “To judge the numbers we need a year.”

The project as a whole will cost Legends developer RED about $1.2 billion when all is said and done, according to RED officials. Some of this funding came from RED, while other monies came from bonds taken out with the city of Sparks.

“This is what a public-private partnership can do,” said Steve Graham, RED Development’s vice president of destination development.

“This wouldn’t have been possible without STAR bonds,” state Sen. Maurice Washington said with a smile as he wandered the newly opened center. Washington, a Sparks native, created the bonding mechanism in 2005 to encourage development.

Sales Tax Anticipated Revenue (STAR) bonds issued by the city of Sparks paid for 19 percent of RED’s price tag, with more than $800 million coming from private sources. The bonds lure developers by promising that 75 percent of sales tax revenues generated by a development can be used to pay off the development’s construction debt. The rest of the sales tax revenue is distributed to local municipalities. Eventually, all sales tax revenue will go to the city.

“The obvious benefit is with the tax,” said Len Stevens, Sparks Chamber of Commerce executive director. “But the most important thing is that it creates jobs.”

Stevens said that the new Nike Factory outlet has joined the Sparks chamber, adding that the chamber has scheduled meetings with about half of the other retailers.

“When people have jobs it stimulates everything else in the economy,” Stevens said.

Commenting on Legends’ effect on other chamber businesses, Stevens said that he did not think it would hurt local small business.

“These are unique stores,” Stevens said. “And you have to keep in mind that this was built not just for locals but for tourists.”

In order to receive financial help from the city of Sparks through the STAR bonds, RED had to prove that more than 50 percent of Legends business would come from tourists.

A 117-page report by McClure consulting, rubber stamped by the Sparks City Council in 2006, claimed to find that 50 percent number to be feasible. It took into consideration the scope of the Legends project as well as northern Nevada’s existing tourism climate.

And while those spending their money may be from out of town, many retailers said that their job recruitment aimed for locals.

“We have hired 30 part-time employees,” said Ann Taylor Factory store manager Heidi Wetterstrom.

Those jobs were filled not only by some from the May 7 Legends job fair, but also through flyers posted at UNR and online applications, Wetterstrom said.

“A lot are from Reno and Sparks and some are college students just home for the summer,” she added.