"I can remember playing in there when I was a little girl," said Keith, a lifelong Fuquay-Varina resident who first shopped at the story at Vance Street and Fuquay Avenue with her parents in the 1970s.

She continued the tradition well into this year, strolling the aisles while her children took piano lessons at a music shop a few doors down.

But on Wednesday, Keith crouched in her parked minivan and read a book, unable to roam the two-story corner department store.

Belk, the town center's commercial anchor for 60 years, closed a few weeks ago. Yellow and green paint peeled from the brick facade, its windows veiled in brown paper.

"It's just so sad," said Keith, 39, who was parked in front of the empty building. "It looks like history, all boarded up."

The closure of the store was among a string of recent blows to the core of this growing Western Wake County railroad town, whose mineral springs were a magnet for visitors in the early 1900s.

Town leaders are confident that ongoing efforts to revive the downtown will take hold. But some local business owners are less optimistic.

"Revitalization happens over many, many years," said Susan Weis, executive director of the Fuquay-Varina Revitalization Association. "We're getting there."

Tale of two towns

Fuquay's fortunes of late have resulted from the Triangle's growth. As the region has expanded, and as homes in Raleigh and Cary became pricier, more residents found their way to less expensive homes further out. The town's population has almost doubled in the past ten years.

Much of that growth was outside downtown. And with those new homes came shopping centers. Chain stores such as Kohl's and Home Depot stretch toward Raleigh along U.S. 401, siphoning shoppers away from downtown.

In 2007, when times were fatter, Fuquay-Varina citizens approved $2 million bonds for an ongoing downtown revitalization project. The most recent phase of the project is a new sidewalk that has begun to re-connect the sister downtowns of Fuquay and Varina. Town leaders hope the stone pavers will one day form a promenade that will direct interest, and dollars, back to their historic shopping districts.

At the opposite end of the downtown corridor, less than a mile from Belk, Stephens Building Supply jettisoned two thirds of its business, and employees, last month due to the busted housing market.

Karl Cherry, one of 40 Stephens employees who are losing their jobs, said he wept when the layoffs were announced on Feb. 19.

"I lost it," said Cherry, who for 13 years served as Stephens' warehouse manager. "I just broke down."

Cherry will work a few more weeks as he helps empty the vast lumber yard, a stone's throw from the football field at Fuquay-Varina High School. Lumber, concrete, siding and framing used to stand dozens of feet high in these warehouses and yards, but builders no longer drive into the lot with their empty truck beds, finding no need for home-building supplies and no loans from the banks.

Several of these builders' wives used to spend more than $300 per week in Padoodles, a trendy kids' boutique a block away from the lumberyard, says owner Susan Scott, also the wife of a builder. "Now they don't come in at all."

'We're all struggling'

Scott says that her business is down 60 percent since early 2008. She says she has considered closing shop.

"We're all struggling," Scott said. Not a single customer walked through her door during the lunch hour, which used to be her busiest time of the day.

Scott and others along this main street have had to get creative to stay afloat. Padoodles, which sells mostly clothes and accessories for girls, has set aside a corner of its sales floor to host private birthday and "American Girl" parties.

Cooleys, a restaurant and pub just a few doors down from the former Belk store, decided to close on Mondays, as business on those days was dreadfully slow. Now it has opened for Sunday brunch to try to capitalize on the crowds.

"When people are short on money, the first thing to go is eating out," said Paula Pittman, the owner of Cooley's.

She says business has dropped 25 percent in the past two years.

"We just need a new business around here that will attract business for everyone," she said.

Mainstays, like Elliotts Pharmacy, have provided some stability. The entrance to the charming family pharmacy and soda fountain displays black-and-white photos that prove they've been around since 1914.

And downtown is seeing some successful upstarts such as Stick Boy Bread Co. on the Fuquay side, and Aviator Brewing on the Varina side. "We've had a line out the door," said Katie Dies, co-owner of the bakery and café that celebrated its second anniversary this year.

Dies says her regulars start to flow in at 6 a.m. for their pre-commute coffee, and an occasional sticky bun or loaf of fresh-baked French bread.

And Mark Doble's beer business is flying high. His Aviator brand, with a new tap house that opened in October along the railroad tracks in Varina, is expanding its brewing capacity five-fold.Today, the new sidewalk won't quite get you to Doble's barstools.

A path to Varina

As the sidewalk turns left behind the CVS Pharmacy toward Varina, it continues a hundred yards past an abandoned motel and stops dead at the railroad tracks.

Fuquay-Varina's director of public works, Arthur Mouberry, says the town is at a stalemate in negotiations with Norfolk Southern to see if a pedestrian walkway can ever cross the tracks.

The dead end is characteristic of an entire quarter-mile between these two quaint main streets. Bridging that divide, and encouraging folks to walk it, poses a challenge for the town.

"We're doing everything possible to move forward," Weis said.

On Thursday, the front line of stone pavers reached as far north as the defunct Pontiac dealership, which sits across from two empty warehouses.

That's where Angel Barrientos and two other workers were leveling beds of sand and carefully placing the pavers in a sophisticated pattern.

While Barrientos and his crew continue to add a few dozen yards each day to the town's goal, they're just happy to have a full-time job.

All three men had been working two days a week for the past several months, due in part to the sunken construction market.

Standing at the next storefront along the path, Danny Brown, who repairs lawnmowers and weed trimmers at Carolina Outdoor Power, was putting away a sign that read: "Avoid the rush, get your spring tune-up."

The rush never came.

Awaiting the rush

Brown doubts a new sidewalk, even one made with "that old purdy stuff," will attract much beyond the four people he sees walk past the store each day.

He thinks business might pick up when the weather turns warmer.

Down the road, Ezra Weiss pushed his 2-year-old daughter Brianna in a stroller across Main Street while hanging tenuously to his dog's leash. When the town finishes the sidewalk, he says, he's willing to stroll all the way to Varina.

Meanwhile, Curtis Holleman lamented the loss of downtown's identity - the one leaders are trying to get back. He wonders what will happen with the empty Belk building and hopes another retailer will fill the void.

"Community identity is linked to the downtown areas," said Holleman, president of Elliotts Pharmacy, as he sat at a table in the front of the shop. "Sometimes you start losing that concept, and things kind of go."

Staff writer Jordan Cooke contributed to this report.