Mount Prospect Hobby Lobby closing Friday

The Mount Prospect Hobby Lobby store will close its doors for good at the end of business Friday, company officials announced.

The inventory, manager and possibly some employees of the store at 1480 S. Elmhurst Road in the Mount Prospect Center will be moving to a new store in Clinton, Iowa, company spokesman Bob Miller said Monday. All of the store's employees have been offered jobs at other Hobby Lobby locations, according to a statement from the Oklahoma City-based company.

"We appreciate the 15 years we have been a part of the Mount Prospect community, but due to the proximity of several other Hobby Lobby stores, it was decided to move the store to an underserved market," Miller said. "All the employees in the Mount Prospect store were offered positions in other stores. Eighty-five percent of the employees have accepted those offers."

Mount Prospect Community Development Director Bill Cooney said village officials had heard rumors about the store's potential closing since earlier this year and is working with the shopping center's owner, New York-based Kimco Realty, to fill the 26,113-square-foot space.

He noted that the shopping center, which also is home to a Kohl's, True Value, KFC and Jimmy John's, has historically been 100 percent occupied.

"It's a good owner, a national player in retail," Cooney said. "It's always a challenge (to fill large retail spaces), but nothing we haven't seen before."

Hobby Lobby has several other locations in the suburbs, including Palatine, Schaumburg, Vernon Hills, Bloomingdale, Lombard, Algonquin, Round Lake Beach and Elgin.