For the past seven years, Kings Barcade in downtown Raleigh has hosted it all.

From trivia Mondays and movie night Tuesdays to jazz and karaoke and comedy nights, Kings was never a typical music venue. It opened its doors July of 1999, but come mid-April the owners will be closing those same doors on McDowell Street for the last time.

“We knew in the big scheme of things we wouldn’t be there for the next four or five years,” said Steve Popson, an alumnus and one of the three owners of Kings.

However, the choice to shut down the stage was not one in which the owners had a hand. It was a decision made for them and had nothing to do with the business. The problem is the building itself.

According to Bobby Lewis, a principle at Raleigh Development Company and the landlord of Kings Barcade, the biggest reason the building is being torn down is because the county is building a 900-space parking deck.

“The building is kind of in the way of [the county’s] progress,” he said.

He said a survey done in January proved the building to be encroaching upon city property; the back of the building is about 8 to 10 inches over the boundary, and the front encroaches the property line by 3 to 4 inches.

He sold the county an easement across the property through the building entrance into the proposed parking deck for $75 a square foot. The building is 50 feet wide by 110 feet long, and Lewis said he made $500,000 off the sale.

Popson said Lewis had been trying to work a deal with the county for a while, and while the official news of the building’s demolition came in the first week of February, the owners had seen it coming beforehand. According to Popson, they spent the end of last year trying to prepare in advance.

However, according to Popson, the owners were still surprised with the quick turnaround. Kings’ last show will be the weekend of April 6, and demolition will begin soon after.

“If we had three or four months to plan and schedule, we would have had a big hoopla,” he said.

Without prior knowledge, though, Kings had already booked shows through June and had to contact the bands scheduled and turn them away.

However, Popson said Kings is looking to relocate, so the displacement is being viewed by the owners as a temporary one.

“Personally, I haven’t gone through the reflection process of missing it,” he said.

Kings became part of a Raleigh music scene that Popson said he feels has defined itself well throughout the past few years. He said one of the strengths of Raleigh as well as the Triangle at large is the number of live music venues.

“It is a credit to people who support the music scene and are part of the live music scene,” Popson said. “”[We] each kind of carved out our own niche, and it worked, and it worked well.” He said he and the other owners are tossing around ideas as to where Kings will go from here, not just physically but also in what it offers to the community.They are searching for a space close to the same size as the current building, maybe a little bigger, but with more flexibility than the venue on McDowell Street.

Popson said Kings would like to be able to offer a space for live music as well as a separate, defined space for simply hanging out.

“We lost some customers because to get in you had to pay,” Popson said.

Ideally, he said the new Kings will be one building encompassing many aspects, including a nightclub, a bar, a dining area and a separate area for performances.

The timeline for all of this is unclear, though, according to Popson.

“In an ideal world we’ll be open before the end of the year, or during the fall semester,” he said.