page_title: Sam the Record Man
section_title: Yonge Street flagship store closes
hierarchical_section_title: Sam the Record Man / Yonge Street flagship store closes
caption_attribution_description: The empty &amp; demolished Sam The Record Man building photographed in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
context_page_description: Sam the Record Man was a Canadian record store chain that, at one time, was Canada's largest music recording retailer. In 1982, its ads proclaimed that it had "140 locations, coast to coast".
  Its iconic flagship store was located at 259 Yonge Street in 1959 and moved to 347 Yonge Street two years later, remaining there from 1961 until it closed in 2007. Located at Yonge just north of Dundas, the store became part of a strip of music stores, nightclubs and taverns featuring live performance that produced the "Toronto Sound" and was the centre of Toronto's music scene in the 1960s.
  The Yonge Street store was the best known store in the Sam the Record Man chain of 140 locations across Canada, two blocks away from the Eaton Centre and Dundas Square. Sam's became a popular attraction, drawing people into its selection of LP records, and later cassettes and compact discs. It flourished in the Downtown Toronto area, quickly gaining notoriety and outselling the competition. What started as a single storefront had evolved into an entire block completely dedicated to the Sam the Record Man store.
context_section_description: On May 29, 2007, Jason and Bobby Sniderman announced that the iconic flagship store, on Toronto's Yonge and Gould Streets, would close permanently on June 30, 2007. They stated that "their decision reflects the increasing impact of technology on the record industry." There was also increasing pressure to rent out some of the property or sell it to Ryerson University.
  On May 30, 2007, supporters started a Facebook group to save the store's neon spinning record signs titled "Save the Sam's Sign!!!"; the group, and its attached online petition, garnered more than 18,000 members.  On June 14, 2007, it was announced that the signage, and some of the fixtures and memorabilia from the store, would be auctioned by Benaco Sales on June 27. The remaining stock had been greatly reduced to sell but was not sold at the auction sale.
  However, on June 22, 2007, the Toronto city council voted in favour of designating the entire property as a heritage site, protecting the entire building, including the landmark signs. The entire building was designated because the Ontario Heritage Act has no provisions to protect store signs.
  The site at 347 Yonge Street was a valuable piece of property and was purchased by Ryerson University in early 2008. The site sat vacant for several months before the spinning records were lit again at Nuit Blanche on October 4, 2008, although Ryerson owned the building at the time.
  On January 18, 2008, Ryerson University acquired the property for future expansion of its nearby campus.
  On October 4, 2008, the iconic neon signs were lit for the last time as part of Toronto's Nuit Blanche festivities. The removal of the signage commenced shortly after the final lighting, and by mid-March 2009 the building had been partially demolished.
  About a year after the lighting of the records at Nuit Blanche, demolition of the structure began.  The building was demolished in early 2010. The new Ryerson Student Learning Centre (SLC) opened on February 23, 2015, on the old Sam's site.
  The closing of the flagship store left two Ontario-based franchise stores in operation, one in Sarnia and one in Belleville.  The Sarnia store closed in 2009; the last remnant of the Sam the Record Man retail empire is now one former franchise store that remains open under the Sam the Record Man name in Belleville as an independent store.
caption: The corner of Yonge & Gould St. as of 2012.
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