Sam’s Quik Shop is closing after all.
Owner John Boy posted on Facebook this afternoon that the Durham mainstay would be closing on December 31. A second location, Sam’s Bottle Shop, on N.C. 54, will remain open.
In the Facebook post, Boy thanked customers and said he was selling the property to a housing developer that is a “family-owned business” and intends to name the redeveloped property “Blue Light Living” in a nod to the shop’s earlier incarnation as a drive-in grill called The Blue Light.
You may remember that the Herald-Sun reported way back in July that Wilmorite Construction had reached a purchase agreement with the owner of Sam’s and submitted plans to build apartments on the site, which is close to Duke University and a planned light rail stop.
You may also recall that Boy, at the time, denied that reporting by Zachery Eanes in a Facebook post that also included a photo of the newspaper with cans of the Fake News New England IPA from Gizmo Brewworks.
“I was approached over a year ago with an offer to purchase the property at 1605 Erwin Rd. For some time I was unable to speak on the subject because in my opinion, any business discussions were too premature to even talk about. I have told everyone that has asked that I’d been considering offers for the Sam’s Quik Shop property for years. Several never bringing much of anything to fruition where others seemed more positive,” Boy wrote in the post announcing the shop’s closure.
Sam’s got started as a gas station in 1946, and the Blue Light was added to the property three years later. In 1974, The Blue Light was closed and the space reopened as a Sam’s Quik Shop, a convenience store that eventually grew to the bottle shop and bar it’s known as today. Together, the two Durham locations carry sixteen hundred beers.
BLUE LIGHT LIVING CONDOS? Foh outta here with that garbage.
Absolutely tragic. I’ve been going there since Duke undergrad, and now I’m back in Durham and it’s been likely returning home to go to Sam’s on a weekend afternoon for a beer. The “Bottle Shop” on 54 will never replace the Quik Shop. John Darnielle (of the Mountain Goats) played the 30-year anniversary show over the summer…and now that sacred ground is going to be a stupid ass condo gym for Fuqua students or some shit.