Hudson Belk, a mainstay of the Fuquay-Varina shopping district for more than half a century, will close in mid-to-late January.

Representatives of the Belk Company announced the planned closing to employees Monday morning, assuring all that positions will be made available to them in other area stores.

Store manager Terry Snyder said the Fuquay-Varina store has five fulltime employees plus several other regular part-time workers. More are working currently, hired to handle increased holiday traffic.

Snyder, who has been with the Belk Company for 20 years and has managed the Fuquay-Varina store since 1998, said he doesn’t know just what prompted the company to close the local store now. “The economy certainly hasn’t helped,” he said, adding, “It’s not the fault of the people here. The store has not been losing money.”

As for competition, Snyder said the opening of Kohl’s, a department store, and a few years earlier the Wal-Mart store, may have affected Belk sales for a time, but he believes those stores brought more shoppers into Fuquay-Varina and, while here, many visited his store as well as the new ones.

The two-story building at the corner of Vance Street and Fuquay Avenue that has housed the local Belk store was built about 1947 by Grayson and Grace Senter to house a hardware and paint store, according to retired attorney Jack Senter. Senter said this week his first office was located upstairs in the building along with Dr. A.N. Johnson’s optometric practice and the late Hugh Buchanan’s Nationwide Insurance office. Starlon Adcock of Lillington also started the town’s first radio station with studios above the Belk store. Its call letters were WFVG for “Watch Fuquay-Varina Grow.”

Senter remembers the long, straight stairway that led upstairs from an entrance on the street.

Belk’s eventually bought the building and expanded the store to include the second floor. At one time the store carried sheets and blankets, glassware and kitchen utensils, but in recent times has focused on clothing for the family, Snyder said.

According to the company’s Web site, Belk Inc. was started as a small bargain store in May 1888 in Monroe, N. C by William Henry Belk. It later became a partnership involving the Hudson family of Raleigh and the Belks of Charlotte. Stores were named Hudson Belk for many years until a reorganization led to the formation of Belk Inc.

Stores in the Triangle area, including those in Raleigh and the store in Fuquay-Varina continue to be listed in the phone books as Hudson Belk. Belk Inc. owned 303 retail department stores in the Southeast at the end of 2008, according to the Web site.