New Hampton’s Shopko store to close
It wasn’t wholly unexpected — after all, Shopko has been teetering for months — but the news that the Wisconsin-based company will close all its stores this spring still was a blow to New Hampton.“It hurts, I’m going to be honest about that,” New Hampton Economic Development Director Tammy Robinson said. “Anytime you lose retail in a town our size, it’s going to hurt. … It does give our smaller stores an opportunity to really step forward, but it wasn’t the news we wanted to hear, even if it wasn’t a shock.”Shopko closed a number of stores late in 2018 and announced another round of 250 stores, or about 70 percent of its locations, as it worked to scale back business and get through bankruptcy.But on Monday, company officials announced that they will liquidate its assets and close all of its locations by no later than mid-June.— For more on this story, see the March 22 New Hampton Tribune.