People in Grand Junction will soon have one less department store to shop at. Herberger's, a long time anchor store of Mesa Mall, is going out of business and is expected to close its doors in the next few months.

Parent company Bon-Ton Stores announced Tuesday (April 17) the assets of the company were purchased by Great American Group, LLC and Tiger Capital Group, LLC in a bankruptcy court-supervised auction. The winning bidders plan to close the stores and liquidate the assets.

Bon-Ton President and Chief Executive Officer Bill Tracy released this statement about the bankruptcy auction.

While we are disappointed by this outcome and tried very hard to identify bidders interested in operating the business as a going concern, we are committed to working constructively with the winning bidder to ensure an orderly wind-down of operations that minimizes the impact of this development on our associates, customers, vendors and the communities we serve. We are incredibly grateful to all of our associates for their dedicated service to Bon-Ton and to our millions of loyal customers who we have had the pleasure to serve as their hometown store for more than 160 years.

The Grand Junction Herberger's store occupies approximately 72,000 square feet of space on the north side of Mesa Mall and is one of 212 Bon-Ton owned stores slated to close sometime this year.

In February when the company filed for bankruptcy, 42 of the company's 260 stores were already in the process of closing. It is anticipated the Grand Junction store will be closed by the end of August.

Information regarding the closure did not mention what, if anything, Bon-Ton or the new owners will do to help employees who are losing their jobs.

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