Family-run Citrus Heights music store closing after 44 years

Northridge Music Center, a family-owned business that has operated in Citrus Heights for 44 years, will close at the end of this month.

Chris Teresi, president of the store at 7871 Greenback Lane, said a clearance sale will continue through June 30, with prices on some items now reduced up to half, including musical instruments.

Teresi, whose parents started the business in 1972, said, “It’s just not working anymore.”

He cited the ups and downs of the economy, but he said his relationship with Sacramento-area band directors has remained steady throughout.

“It’s not that I don’t want to answer the question, but really, it’s just everything,” he said. “There’s no one easy answer. A difficult economy. It’s Amazon (online sales). It’s all of the above. The whole picture wasn’t working enough to go on.”

In recent years, Teresi said the store stressed customer service as it competed against a growing number of retail chains and internet sites reaching out to both amateur and professional musicians.

Back in 2009, he told The Sacramento Bee: “We don’t just sell (the instrument) to you; we teach you how to play it, how to maintain it, the whole thing.”

A separate business operating inside Northridge serving musicians throughout the Sacramento area will continue on after Teresi’s operation closes.

Kris Tague of Tague Band Instrument Services said he will open in a new space in the Greenfaire Village shopping complex at the corner of Greenback Lane and Fair Oaks Boulevard – just east of Northridge.

Tague said he will have music lesson studios staffed by seven teachers moving over from Northridge. He said he plans to have teachers available for student lessons by July 1.

Tague said he will remain in the Northridge space through the end of July. During that month, Tague said he plans to convert the Greenfaire Village site to accommodate his long-standing band and orchestral instruments repair and maintenance business. That operation also will include a wide range of band, orchestral and guitar accessories, plus band/orchestral rentals.

Tague said he also will open a “satellite repair shop” inside The Strum Shop, which plans to move from 408 Roseville Square to 209 Vernon St. in Roseville by the end of June.

More information is available at northridgemusic.com and playtague.com.

This story was originally published June 3, 2016 at 11:29 AM with the headline "Family-run Citrus Heights music store closing after 44 years."