After it initially appeared it would be spared, a new list appearing on Shopko’s website shows that Albert Lea will now be losing its store along with Austin.

Both stores are slated to close May 12.

“It’s very disappointing to hear the news of the closing,” Albert Lea Mayor Vern Rasmussen Jr. said. “As a community, we are going to continue to look at our opportunities.”

The city last year hired Retail Strategies LLC for $40,000 to promote the community and its retail opportunities. The company in the first six months of the contract had reached out to 22 retailers. 

Albert Lea City Manager Chad Adams said Retail Strategies gives updates to the city a couple times a month about possibilities of retailers showing interest in the city. 

“It’s unfortunate,” Adams said. “We will be talking to Retail Strategies and talking about options for that kind of space.” 

Rasmussen said he will miss having the Shopko store and others that have closed in recent months in Albert Lea because of problems at the corporate level of the companies. 

“We’re a victim of a broader corporate decision,” Adams echoed. 

Rasmussen and Adams said from what they had been hearing, the Albert Lea store had performed well.

In mid-January, the retail chain announced it had filed for voluntary petitions for a court-supervised financial restructuring under Chapter 11 off the United States Bankruptcy Code. Shopko and its affiliate companies filed for bankruptcy protection from creditors on Jan. 16 in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Nebraska, citing assets of less than $1 billion and debts between $1 billion and $10 billion.

The Ashwaubenon, Wisconsin-based retailer then announced plans to close stores, sell its pharmacy assets and spin off its optical centers into standalone locations. The changes were designed to enable the company to emerge from bankruptcy with the ability to continue operating with a slimmed-down, more profitable footprint across the Midwest and northwest United States, according to the Green Bay Press Gazette in Wisconsin. The company published a list this week that indicates it will close 251 stores or 70 percent of its locations, more than twice the number of stores Shopko identified for closing in mid-January.

At the time, the only area stores listed to be closed were in Rochester and Fairmont, which will be closing April 15. That appears to have changed.

“This decision is a difficult, but necessary one,” said Russ Steinhorst, chief executive officer at the time of the January announcement.

Shopko has been in Albert Lea since October 1985.

Look to the Tribune as more information becomes available.