Iconic music store shuttered in Newark

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Feb 29, 2008 | by Todd R Brown

NEWARK -- The signs at the entrance to Rasputin Music say "Goodbye Newark," and employees this week loaded some remaining wares from the store into a rental truck.

Although a steel chain seals off the front doors to the former CD warehouse on Mowry Avenue, Rasputin staffers have been nearly as secretive as Soviet spies on the fate of the store.

Previously, local managers -- forbidden by their superiors to go on record by name, they said -- remarked that the iconic shop was there to stay.

One worker helping to pack up the contents Wednesday said the strip mall's Peninsula developer had bought out the lease, although that could not be confirmed. She said the store closed earlier this month and would not reopen elsewhere.

The chain still has stores in San Lorenzo, Mountain View and Campbell.

Rochelle Lopez, asset manager for Sand Hill Property Management Co. in San Mateo, said Thursday through a colleague that she could not discuss the deal until next week. Lopez is the account chief for the redevelopment project.

Rasputin management in Berkeley has not returned repeated calls to explain why the chain has bid adieu to customers in the Tri-City

area, and whether any closings are in the offing at the remaining nine stores.

It was unclear what the chain had in mind for its Newark employees.

Rebecca Chavez, manager of the adjacent Dollar Tree discount store on Mowry, said some of the workers told her they would be transferred.

On the other hand, she said, "A couple employees came in and said they just let them go."

Ivan Lanuza, 26, of San Jose drove up Wednesday night to Rasputin to buy a CD by alternative rock band Face to Face and was surprised to find workers filling up a truck that he at first thought might be carrying gear for an in-store show.

"I thought, 'Oh, maybe they're going to have a concert here,'" he said. "It's the opposite."

Although he lives closer to the Rasputin store in Campbell, Lanuza, a printing press operator originally from Mexico City, said he visited Newark once or twice a month in search of DVDs and CDs.

"It's kind of sad to see Rasputin going down," he said. "It's never 'far' to find the things that you really love."

Terrence Grindall, Newark's community development director, also was surprised to hear that the shop is kaput.

"I knew Sand Hill was talking to existing tenants about whether they would stay or not," he said. "I did not know that they finally decided to close."

Dollar Tree, the sole remaining tenant at the site, will move to a new structure across from the Mervyns being built on the property to the east.

The old mall building is set for demolition, to be replaced by a renovated Mowry Center shopping mall. Circuit City and PetSmart were among the businesses that previously vacated the site.

Now, Newark's gutted Rasputin Music -- like its namesake, Russia's "Mad Monk" who held sway over the czarist government and was assassinated during World War I -- is no more.

A recent report said download sales were up in 2007 but could not offset a drop in CD sales that netted a 10 percent decline in music revenue. Market research firm NPD Group said last year that 1 million consumers abandoned the CD-buying market altogether.

Whether Rasputin factored that into its decision is a mystery.

Reach staff writer Todd R. Brown at 510-353-7004 or todd.brown@bayareanewsgroup.com.