Retailer was key to revival of shopping center
By Ed Nadolski
Editor in Chief
Stock+Field, which helped revive Burlington’s Fox River Plaza shopping center when it arrived as a Big R store in 2017, is closing along with the company’s 24 other stores in the Midwest.
Stock+Field’s corporate entity filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in federal court in Minnesota Sunday. Chapter 11 provides protection from creditors and allows a company to reorganize with the goal of remaining in business.
For now, however, Stock+Field plans to cease retail operations at its farm supply and general merchandise stores.
Stock+Field followed the bankruptcy filing with the announcement that it is closing all of its stores in five states in part due to the effects of the coronavirus pandemic.
“There have been many challenges in 2020 and Stock+Field was not immune to them,” Chairman and CEO Mathew Whebbe said in a company statement.
He announced the company will begin a liquidation sale in the near future. The announcement did not provide an official closing date for the stores.
“S+F has partnered with providers of new merchandise and will be selling items at massive discounts in the coming weeks,” Whebbe said.
“We hope to reopen stores at some point in the future,” he added.
The Burlington store, which at the time of its opening was Big R’s first Wisconsin location, moved into a former Kmart building in October of 2017, bringing a much needed retail presence to a site that had been vacant for six years.
With Big R and Dunham’s sporting goods anchoring opposite ends of the shopping center in recent years, many of the other storefronts were filled.
That prosperity was short-lived, however, as this week’s announcement creates another era of uncertainty regarding the largest space in the shopping center.
The Fox River Plaza, 1120 Milwaukee Ave., is owned by Joe Devorkin, a Milwaukee real estate investor who is credited by Burlington Mayor Jeannie Hefty with driving the shopping center’s recent success.
In a 2017 interview, Devorkin, whose specialty is reviving distressed shopping centers, said Big R was key to improving the Fox River Plaza.
“For the shopping center and the community, what Big R brings cannot be overestimated,” Devorkin said at the time. “It’s an ideal fit for our center – something that was missing from the community.”
To read the complete story see the Jan. 14 edition of the Burlington Standard Press.
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