Bergner's

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Bergner's

Type	Department store
Founded	1889
Headquarters	Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Industry	Retail
Products	Clothing, footwear, bedding, furniture, jewelry, beauty products, and housewares.
Website	http://www.bergners.com/

Bergner's is a major department store in Central and Northern Illinois, established in 1889 in Peoria, Illinois offering mid-line to higher end merchandise in their largest stores. The current flagship store is located in Peoria at The Shoppes of Grande Prairie.

The store was opened in downtown Peoria in 1889 by Peter Alan Bergner. Several years later, Bergner moved to another location in downtown Peoria, remaining at the location for many years. The company was family-owned by P.A. Bergner until his death in the mid-1920s. His son owned the company until his suicide in 1938 in Henry, Illinois. The Maus company, based in Switzerland, acquired the company at that point and gave the store its unique red logo (six hexagons).

In 1957, a second Bergner store was opened in Peoria at the then-suburban Sheridan Village Shopping Center. This was the largest department store in Illinois outside of the Chicago area. More stores began opening in the Peoria-Pekin area afterwards, expanding as far as the Chicago suburbs.

The late 1970s and 1980s saw change for Bergner's. It acquired eight Myers Brothers Company locations in 1978. In 1985, Bergner's acquired Boston Store and all of its department stores in Wisconsin along with three Gimbel's locations. In 1989 P.A. Bergner bought Chicago's Carson Pirie Scott for over $450 million. Carson's itself had just bought Minneapolis-based Donaldson's in November 1987. With this, Bergner's was a major Midwestern presence, with stores in five states: Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, Indiana, and Iowa, operating under the Bergner's, Carson Pirie Scott and Boston Store names.

In August 1991, Bergner's filed for bankruptcy, with the company coming out of Chapter 11 in 1993 with the new name Carson Pirie Scott & Co. and becoming a publicly-traded company. Proffitt's Inc, now Saks Incorporated, bought the company in 1998 and its purchase increased the northern presence of the Saks company.

In July 2005, Saks completed the sale of its Southern Department Store Group consisting of Proffitt's and McRae's to Charlotte, North Carolina-based Belk, Inc. On October 31, 2005, Saks announced that it was selling Bergner's and its other Northern Department Store Group stores (Carson Pirie Scott, Younkers, Boston Store, and Herberger's) to Bon-Ton Stores in a $1.1 billion deal; the transaction was completed on March 6, 2006.[1] Currently, the Bergner's segment operates in 14 locations exclusively in Illinois.