Another former Stock Building Supply site is slated to get new ownership today when Kitzmans Lumber and Building Materials adds its fourth location: a former Stock facility in Loves Park, Ill.
Kitzmans president Scott Kitzman said in a news release that his company expects to close the deal at 1 p.m. CT today and then throw a "gate-crashing party" in which the company will load up trucks with lumber and then "crash the gates and get right to work stocking the new location so that we can service our customers!"
Union Pacific Railroad, which serves the yard located just north of Rockford, also plans to get into the act by delivering carloads of lumber to the facility during the party, Kitzmans' news release said. "We are bringing the best looking engine we could find," it quoted Rich Gayne, Union Pacific manager for the Rockford (Ill.) Region, as saying.
Wolohan Lumber Co. operated the yard from 1973 to 1998, when Stock bought it. Stock then ran the Loves Park, Ill., facility until May, when it was closed along with scores of other yards nationwide as part of the sale of 51% of Stock to a private equity firm, its entrance into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and its subsequent emergence with a focus on 19 markets nationwide. (See other stories involving Stock.)
Terms of the Loves Park deal were not disclosed. Kitzmans operates yards in Rockford and Dixon, Ill. along with a design studio in Rockford. Founded in 1979, Kitzmans employs 40 people.
