The former Spanky’s restaurant in Chapel Hill will soon serve a new kind of Caniac
The Chapel Hill building that once housed the beloved Spanky’s restaurant has been sold, making way for a new brand of chicken fingers on Franklin Street.
The fast food chain Raising Cane’s purchased the downtown Brockwell building at the corner of Franklin and Columbia streets earlier this month. The Louisiana-based chicken company paid $3.876 million for the building, according to Orange County property records. The building also includes a 23-year-old Starbucks cafe. That cafe will remain open.
The building’s purchase was first reported by the Triangle Business Journal.
The larger restaurant space most recently was occupied by Lula’s, a Southern concept built around fried chicken. Chapel Hill Restaurant Group opened Lula’s in June 2018 but closed it in June 2020, one of the many restaurants claimed by the pandemic.
Mark Sloan, whose family has owned the building since the 1960s, said the restaurants closing, plus the two years of being vacant, told them the time had come to let go of the building.
“We felt like the timing was right,” Sloan told The News & Observer. “Raising Cane’s is willing to invest in the building and make it shiny and new.”
Raising Cane’s, whose customers are known as Caniacs, has more than 500 locations, mostly in the Midwest and Southwest and the brand’s native Louisiana. Raising Cane’s is exclusively a chicken finger restaurant with crinkle cut fries and cole slaw, according to an online menu.
At 120 years old, the Brockwell building stands as a Chapel Hill time capsule. Built from clay bricks dug up to make Columbia Street, Sloan said, it’s been an ice skating rink, a grocery store, a theater, drug store and multiple restaurants.
Soon it will be the Triangle’s first Raising Cane’s location. Reached by phone, a Raising Cane’s employee involved in the sale couldn’t offer a timeline for the new restaurant.
“My siblings and I grew up in that building, we have a deep connection to it,” Sloan said. “I learned how to work a cash register there when I was a boy. We felt like (Raising Cane’s) were a good fit for downtown.”
There are two Raising Cane’s locations in North Carolina — one in Greenville, near East Carolina University, and one in Jacksonville, near the Marine Corps base at Camp Lejeune.
Sloan called the intersection of Franklin and Columbia Streets the “cardinal” location in Chapel Hill, but in recent years it’s been a corner of struggle. Along with Lula’s, two pizzerias have also closed there during the pandemic, Lotsa Pizza and MidiCi. (Seafood Destiny Express, a Greensboro-based food truck, had a soft opening this week for their “soulful seafood” restaurant in the former Lotsa Pizza space.)
“There’s a shaking out of the retail and restaurant businesses occurring,” Sloan said. “I don’t think Chapel Hill has found the right formula yet. It’s a challenge to find a business that has the legs to make it.”
Franklin Street trends
In 1977, Chapel Hill restaurateur Mickey Ewell opened Spanky’s, a bar and restaurant that would grow to be a beloved spot within the UNC student community.
Sloan said Ewell created something special in Spanky’s, a kind of lightning he didn’t expect to strike twice.
“Mickey was the special sauce,” Sloan said. “He created something for everyone on the menu. The idea of finding something like that, it’s a unicorn in a sense.”
The arrival of Raising Cane’s continues a trend on Franklin Street towards fast-casual and fast food businesses. It will move into a crowded chicken market. Within a few blocks, the chicken wing scene includes popular local spots like Heavenly Buffaloes, Dame’s Chicken & Waffles and the Korean fried chicken chain, Bonchon.
Sloan said downtown is a different world compared to the Sloan Drugs soda fountain and pharmacy he used to work at as a kid.
“Nothing stays the same,” Sloan said. “You stick your feet in the Mississippi River one moment and it’s a different river the next. There’s a lot of forces at work that are larger than an individual. We would have loved to have been able to hold on to the building and find a mom-and-pop business that wasn’t a national chain. But that’s a dream world. Chapel Hill is changing, Franklin Street is changing, the university is changing.”
Sloan said retaining control of the building would have likely meant hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of renovations before a new business could take over. He said more lucrative deals were passed on in favor of Raising Cane’s, which Sloan said will do the upgrades itself. He believes the company will add something new to the downtown.
“It’s an enormous expense to take care of a 120-year-old building, to fix the leaks and the rotted wood, replace the fire escape and the beams,” Sloan said. “Raising Cane’s will breathe new life into the building and be a catalytic venture hopefully spurring other businesses.”
This story was originally published December 31, 2021 at 8:15 AM with the headline "The former Spanky’s restaurant in Chapel Hill will soon serve a new kind of Caniac."
