Springfield’s first – and last – Marco’s Pizza location has
closed with the shuttering of the store at 3201 W. Iles Ave. as of Dec. 9.
In a Dec. 10 interview with The Pantagraph, McLain
Hoogland, president of Hoogland Restaurant Group, cited the rising minimum wage
in Illinois as the reason for closing the Springfield, Bloomington and Peoria
locations.
The Lifting Up Illinois Working Families Act, which was
signed into law in 2019, kicked off a series of increases to Illinois’ minimum
wage. It has increased every Jan. 1 since 2020, with the final increase scheduled
to take effect Jan. 1, 2025, and raise it from $14 to $15 an hour for workers
age 18 and older.
The Hoogland Restaurant Group is the largest franchisee of
Marco’s Pizza, with more than 100 franchises nationwide, according to the
company’s website. The company is a subsidiary of Highland Ventures, a real
estate business operated by the Hoogland family that owns and manages more than
700 properties in 20 states.
The Hoogland family founded Family Video, which grew to 800
stores in multiple states. In 2013, Family Video entered into a $100 million
deal with Marco’s Pizza, which opened its first Springfield store in the same West
Iles Avenue shopping center as Family Video. That was followed two years later
with new locations adjacent to the Family Video stores on South Sixth Street
and North Grand Avenue.
However, the Marco’s Pizza store at 2917 S. Sixth St., along
with locations in Jacksonville and Galesburg, closed suddenly in October 2018,
according to a Jacksonville Journal-Courier article at the time.
In 2021, Family Video was the last video rental chain in the
U.S. when it closed its remaining 250 locations. The West Iles Avenue location
was converted into a Dollar General store.
Marco’s Pizza was founded in Ohio in 1978, and the restaurant
chain currently has more than 1,000 stores in the U.S. At one time, the company
had nearly two dozen locations in Illinois alone, but now the company website
only lists stores in Collinsville and Belleville, plus several in the St. Louis
area.
