Company going out of business

By Erik Buchinger

All Shopko locations will shut down according to an announcement the company made on Monday, March 18.

The remaining 120 stores will be closed by mid-June, including the Clintonville Shopko Hometown location at 291 S. Main St.

Shopko declared bankruptcy in January and was unable to find a buyer for its business.

It will begin to shut down its retail operations this week.

The company is still determining the future of its optical business.

“This is not the outcome that we had hoped for when we started our restructuring efforts,” Russ Steinhorst, CEO of Shopko, said in a statement. “We want to thank all of our teammates for their hard work and dedication during their time at Shopko.”

Shopko will not move forward with the auction it had previously considered.

Gordon Brothers will oversee a liquidation process that is expected to conclude 10 to 12 weeks from now.

In the statement, Shopko said it is committed to ensuring the orderly wind down of operations that minimizes the impact of this development on its teammates, customers, vendors and the communities it serves.

The Clintonville location survived the initial Shopko closures in February when 251 stores were announced to be shut down, including 42 in Wisconsin. Clintonville Shopko’s pharmacy, however, was part of those closures.

Shopko was founded in 1962 and is headquartered in Green Bay.