The recent news of the Sheboygan location of Hobby Lobby closing in January is disappointing news for Sheboygan’s retail sector. With Meijer purchasing the Memorial Mall property and indicating that they planned to demolish the Sears, Hobby Lobby and rest of the mall, the City Development Department immediately obtained the real estate contact for Hobby Lobby from Meijer. City Development staff placed a call to the real estate representative at Hobby Lobby in Oklahoma City, OK expressing our interest in working with them to find another location in Sheboygan market in order to retain the store. Hobby Lobby indicated the Sheboygan location performed well, but they would need to find an appropriate location in order to relocate. Hobby Lobby’s model is to lease existing underutilized retail space and to be located near other major retail traffic generators.
A number of options were presented including the City working with them to find a developer to build them a new store in Washington Square area or the area around the south side Wal-Mart. Neither of these options worked with Hobby Lobby’s current model. Ideally, Hobby Lobby would prefer to be centrally located with a minimum of 50,000 square feet of space. Currently there is no existing space in the market that meets their requirements. Existing locations such as the former Pick N Save on Calumet Drive, and the former Sentry store are not viable locations as they are unfit for Hobby Lobby’s needs or are currently being utilized for other purposes. Locations outside of Sheboygan were also suggested, such as in Plymouth, but other communities lack the population base to support the store, according to the real estate representatives. The City of Sheboygan worked with the Sheboygan County Economic Development Corporation regarding opportunities that they are working on and those leads did not work either. While it will be difficult for many crafters across the county to not have Hobby Lobby, we remain hopeful that in the future other opportunities will present themselves that Hobby Lobby can support and they will re-open the Sheboygan location.