Bomgaars is under contract to purchase this Shopko building in Pipestone.
Bomgaars is under contract to purchase Pipestone’s former Shopko building.
If all goes as planned, the company will own the building by late November, do some light renovation to the 1002 Seventh St. SE location, and move in by early summer of 2020, said Torrey Wingert, Bomgaars CEO, speaking by phone from the company’s Sioux City, Iowa headquarters.
The company is under contract to buy both the Pipestone and Luverne locations.
“It came down to the fact of better buildings and better locations for us to grow our inventory,” Wingert said.
The current space is 34,000 square feet, the former Shopko store 43,000 square feet. The biggest draw is the outdoor display space that would be in front of the store rather than along the side and out back, Wingert said. The current location also doesn’t accommodate a forklift so the company has to rent space to store it.
“It’s worked OK, but you don’t get the opportunity to get much larger buildings for good prices in the towns we do business in,” Wingert said.
Shopko began closing department store locations in late 2018. The retailer claimed bankruptcy in January, and then shuttered its remaining locations, including its Pipestone and Luverne stores, by mid-June of this year. Both of the buildings are owned by The Christensen Corporation.
The closed buildings opened opportunities for Bomgaars to open six new stores this fall in new towns, and to expand seven of their existing locations in 2020, including Pipestone and Luverne.
Once the 2020 relocations are completed, Bomgaars will have 92 stores, more than double the number it had when it first purchased Pipestone’s former M&M building in 2008.
Cole Lytle, manager of the Pipestone store, said he’s “ecstatic” about the pending purchase due to the extra space “and the opportunity to give everything a fresh look; just a good fresh look.”
The company intends to sell its existing building at 120 Second St. NW once the move is complete.