Schoolkids Records, a College Town Mainstay for Decades, to Shutter Chapel Hill Location

On Monday, Schoolkids Records owner Stephen Judge announced that the Chapel Hill location of the independent store will permanently close at the end of the year.

“Owning a store, much less one with the history and reputation of Schoolkids and operating on Franklin St has been the thrill of my lifetime. I will miss it terribly. It is like a death in the family,” Judge wrote in a GoFundMe message to supporters. 

In its heyday, Schoolkids had record shops in college towns across the Southeast; in the past few years, it has shrunk to locations in Chapel Hill and Raleigh. The flagship Schoolkids Records store in Raleigh, near N.C. State, isn’t going anywhere, Judge stresses, and with more time, now, he hopes to make it even stronger.

Cinched in a Franklin Street band of homegrown businesses like Mediterranean Deli and Local 506, the Chapel Hill location has been iconic in its own right.

Opened in the 1970s, the store saw generations of college students discover artists from Nirvana to Fiona Apple, Guns ‘N’ Roses to The Supremes—and saw the start of some legendary local bands in their own right, like The Connells and Superchunk, which emerged from musical relationships at the store. 

Judge tells INDY that the Chapel Hill closure is the result of several business and personal pressures—including the well-documented challenges of running a business on Franklin Street.

“I’ve had four landlords in the last seven years…which is crazy,” says Judge, who re-opened the Franklin Street location in 2016, after it first closed in 2008.

He emphasizes that the landlords he’s rented from have all been pleasant, though each time the space changes hands has been accompanied by a rent hike. And while he considered a move to another Chapel Hill location, he says he began to wonder if signing another five-year lease was a good idea in a mercurial business landscape.

“It wasn’t until last fall when inflation really started to kick in and started to affect everybody that everybody started going, ‘Oh, crap.’ The major label stuff—especially the Taylor Swifts and the Noah Kahans—went up an average of $10 a record,” says Judge.

The Chapel Hill store is now undergoing a massive liquidation sale, with records, posters, and memorabilia all up for grabs.

The Chapel Hill music scene over the years

Pipe Returns With a Scorching New Album and a Lament for Affordable Living

‘Steadman’s Wake’ Shows Why the Connells Have Been One of the Most Enduring Local Indie-Rock Bands

Archers of Loaf’s “Raleigh Days” Resonates on a Frequency Only Locals Will Hear

The Schoolkids closure is the latest sign of the larger specter haunting Chapel Hill businesses: Students, the lifeblood of the downtown economy, are only around for nine months of the year. As rents have crawled up, small business owners have struggled to survive the summers.

Larger chains have had more success. This summer, Starbucks moved into a bigger storefront on Franklin Street, allowing chicken-vending neighbor Raising Cane’s to expand into the old Starbucks space.  Over the past decade, town officials have tried to balance the need for a year-round economy with the desire to maintain the independent character of a street older than even the nation’s founding.  

Judge says the record business has always been “feast and famine” and he certainly doesn’t blame town officials for his difficulties. Like many business owners and workers, he’s too busy to go to town council meetings.

But he does believe that the local government and business community can work together to find a business-friendly balance.

“I still think Chapel Hill is a very special town,” Judge maintains. “It hasn’t lost it.”

Reach Reporter Chase Pellegrini de Paur at [email protected]. Comment on this story at [email protected].