After suffering a water main failure on Friday, June 20, The Baxter Bar & Arcade in Chapel Hill has turned to the community for support in the form of a GoFundMe campaign.
The Baxter, located at 108 North Graham Street, features over 50 vintage video games and a full bar. Co-owner Nick Stroud organized the page, which included a detailed explanation of the situation.
“Our water main has completely failed,” his post read. “It runs under the sidewalk, patio, and building. Our landlords are awesome and will help us in any way they can, but that doesn’t solve the short-term emergency we find ourselves in.”
He said that after OWASA warned the Baxter that there may be a leak on their property, they checked everywhere they could within the building. But as it turned out, the problem was on the outside.
“We got our landlord involved and called OWASA for advice,” he wrote. “On the same day, Friday, June 20th, as we were calling OWASA, our water main burst where it meets the meter. We are talking a hundred-gallon-per-minute gusher. It couldn’t have been timed any more coincidentally.”
The broken and flooded water main outside of the Baxter (Image via Nick Stroud on GoFundMe).
The GoFundMe campaign has raised $10,925 as of Wednesday, June 25. That’s just over half of the Baxter’s goal of $20,000, which Stroud says will be used to make up for lost revenue, pay employee stipends, and go towards repairs and water bills. In an update to the arcade’s GoFundMe page shared on Tuesday, June 24, Stroud thanked the community for their support.
“Wow. We cannot thank you enough for your shares, words of encouragement or comedic relief, and especially your donations,” he wrote. “Seeing the community rally to our side has been just the tonic we needed to ease our minds and calm our nerves. We have recouped our lost sales from last Friday through today. There’s still a ways to go, but we are confident we will get there with the help of our wonderful community. We have also sent out stipend payments to our staff for missed shifts, and will send more as we go.”
He said the next step is excavation to replace the current water main, which OWASA found to be over 50 years old.
“Hopefully 2-3 days total once they start, but could be longer. We will try to provide regular updates to the community as we find out new information.”
Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this article incorrectly said the Baxter’s address is located in Carrboro.
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