It's not uncommon for local restaurants to come and go — some not lasting through one year — but when local, iconic, independent stores start to close their doors, panic spreads throughout the community.

In the next couple months, two Milwaukee businesses — Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops and Atomic Records, 1813 E. Locust St. — will call it quits.

Schwartz Bookshops, which has been a staple in Milwaukee for 82 years, has shops at 2559 N. Downer Ave., 4093 N. Oakland Ave., and in Brookfield and Mequon. All four stores will close their doors March 31.

Chairman of Schwartz Bookshops, Rebecca Schwartz said online shopping and people's busy schedules have hurt the store, but "the last straw was the last few months in the economy."

Chains like Borders and Barnes & Noble didn't help either, she said, and she stressed the importance of buying local.

"If you shop at a corporate giant, the money that you spend in that big box shop ends up going back to the corporate seat at that company," Schwartz said, "but if you patronize a local business,the business returns the money to the community."

Schwartz Bookshops ended up giving back scores of profit to the community through its Schwartz Gives Back program, she said.

Two of the four Schwartz shops will remain bookstores, only under different names, Schwartz said. The Downer Avenue Schwartz will be renamed Boswell Book Company and run by Daniel Goldin, who has been a Schwartz employee since 1986. Lanora Hurley, who is currently the manager of the Mequon branch, will open her own independent bookstore at Mequon's store called Next Chapter Bookshop.

"Our model of having four and five different stores with a corporate office doesn't work anymore," Schwartz said. Bookstores need to be owned internally so customers can build a one-on-one relationship with their seller.

She said the company thought out many different scenarios other than closing its doors including selling three stores and leaving one open or selling the space to the community. Ultimately, they decided it was time to pass the business on to reputable employees of the company.

Atomic Records, while not as old as Schwartz Bookshops, is the iconic Milwaukee music store, with grunge rockers, most notably Kurt Cobain, wearing its T-shirts in the '90s.

But nonetheless in December, Atomic Records announced it would be ending operations. The store cut prices to unload stock and as of press time does not have closing date set, although its lease is up at the end of February, which could be extended a few weeks, said Atomic owner Rich Menning.

"Beyond the economy there are dozens of smaller reasons conspiring to put us out of business, from the state of the music industry to the way people relate to music itself," Menning said. "The combined weight of all of these things forced me to make the very difficult decision to close."

One of the major factors plaguing music stores and music corporations across the world is the Internet and the downloading age.

"A by-product of the easy accessibility of MP3s is the easy disposability of them," Menning said. "As a result people don't value music the way they used to. An investment of time and money in seeking out a cherished recording engendered a greater appreciation of it. The sense of anticipation and excitement at discovering a new band or hearing a new album has been greatly diminished."

There are still ways to make a music store profitable, though, said Dan Lambert, assistant manager at the independent record store Exclusive Company, 1669 N. Farwell Ave.

"It's basically how the store keeps up with the times, Lambert said, "Stocking what we know we can sell."

This includes more DVDs, T-shirts and accessories, he said, along with eclectic products like import and rare CDs unavailable on iTunes or at chains. Younger music listeners are getting into listening to albums on vinyl as well, Lambert said, so the stores vinyl stock has increased over the past years.

Menning said he saw a jump in vinyl sales, but it still wasn't enough to save his business.

"A great number of people, even those that grew up in the download age and rarely if ever bought a CD, have discovered the joy of the LP," Menning said. "There is a romance and immediacy to listening to a record that is lost with an MP3. Unfortunately this resurgence is not nearly enough to counteract declining CD sales."

The Atomic Records T-shirt is a hot sell, he said, and as long as demand stays high, he intends on keeping them available online even after the store closes its doors.