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The Purple Goat Kitchen and Bar is the name of the new restaurant planned for the former Shopko North project in Rochester! It made headlines when the owner of Haley Comfort Systems bought the property...

Last January, Shopko entered into bankruptcy, and by March the retail giant announced it was closing all of its stores. The company released a statement at that time saying the closings were due to "excess debt" and "the challenging retail environment". Liquidation sales started soon after, and it didn't take long for the stores to close their doors for good.

...the building will be split into three sections with a restaurant on the west side, Haley Comfort Systems in the middle, and a yet to be determined business filling the remaining spot. (Read more here.)

If you've driven by, you may have seen the banner and thought, "The Purple Goat? is that for real?" Yes, it's for real. The restaurant comes from the imagination of the Curries, who own quite a few restaurants in Rochester, including Newts, Redwood Room, Hefe Rojo, and more.

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The space their taking is 6,400 square feet, which, Jeff Kiger in the PB says is their largest restaurant yet. The patio could add 4,000 square feet to that. That's huge, but, when you think about the location, and all that parking space, 10,000 square feet of patio sounds easily do-able.

I'm still pretty excited to know that Tom Haley bought the space and is redeveloping it. It's the kind of vision we need to make sure our retail spaces don't sit empty and actually grow the value of the Rochester Experience.

Now if he could just find a way to project movies on the side of the building during the summer. lol.

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