Chris Hart, owner of Auckland's Real Groovy record store, is moving across Queen St to new premises at the old Salvation Army citadel.

The iconic Auckland record store Real Groovy is abandoning their Queen St home of 25 years - but say the future is still bright for the traditional record store.

Real Groovy is closing its doors not because of the decline of the CD, but because their old building is due to be demolished for apartments - so they are shifting across the road to a disused Salvation Army church.

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CHRIS MCKEEN/STUFF Chris Hart outside Real Groovy's new home.

The pews are going (although the altar/stage is not) and owner Chris Hart says he can now spread his collection across two floors: devoting the basement to the vinyl revival that has given new hope to record store bosses.

"Turnover has been growing consistently for the last three years, as opposed to the previous five years when we were in constant decline and always reassessing what we were doing in order to keep viable," says Hart.

The owners of the equally-celebrated Aro Video Store in Wellington may have given up the fight today, but Hart said the decline in DVD and CD sales and rentals had been arrested two years ago thanks to plummeting prices. Now he runs a virtual Dutch auction for his second-hand CDs, dropping his prices regularly until they sell.

Grahame Cox The iconic Real Groovy Records.

It also means a declining value for those hocking off their old CDs. "Most people getting rid of their CDs don't owe them anything: they've had their money's worth from them," says Hart. But CDs are no longer the main focus for Real Groovy: it's vinyl, turntables, and pop-culture merchandise that are the big categories.

Record fans may have a fondness for the old Real Groovy, but Hart is looking forward to opening the doors in the new site in January and escaping the leaky ceilings. "I love old buildings, but there's certainly no love lost on this place: it was obviously built quite cheaply in the 1920s."