Extraordinary shop will replace longtime Carrboro thrift store in January
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- Extraordinary Ventures will reopen Extraordinary Thrift Store in Carrboro in January.
- Renovations will adapt the 125 W. Main St. space for disabilities and learning needs.
- Thrift operations will expand jobs and outreach, preserving vouchers and community ties.
A local nonprofit that provides job training and employment to people with intellectual and developmental disabilities will lead a longtime Carrboro thrift shop into its next chapter.
Extraordinary Ventures executive director Lisa Kaylie announced the reopening of the newly branded Extraordinary Thrift Store on Monday. The store at 125 W. Main St. in Carrboro closed in December, roughly a year after the property was sold to Durham-based nonprofit Shared Visions Foundation.
Extraordinary Ventures contacted Shared Visions founder Jay Miller about the space earlier this year while looking for a new home, Kaylie said Monday. A new apartment building has been approved to replace the Extraordinary Visions site at 200 S. Elliott Road.
The development has been delayed for at least two years, Kaylie said, giving the nonprofit more time to plan for its future, ease the transition for their clients to a new space, and keep the popular Elliott Road event center open.
The thrift store could reopen by late January, after making renovations to accommodate people with disabilities and alternative learning styles, and give the space a new look, Kaylie said. Changes include new shelving, a new sales system, and a focus on clothing, instead of furniture. The store will launch a new website, but no longer offer online sales, she added.
They are consulting with HandmeUPs Thrift in Raleigh about the best way to operate the store, she said. They also are seeking donations to help fund the renovation and placing items outside, so people can take them home for free.
She asked supporters with items to donate to the new store to hang onto them a bit longer.
Expanding the Extraordinary Ventures mission
Extraordinary Thrift Store will be the seventh business for the 17-year-old nonprofit, according to the release. Others include a laundry service, cleaning service, pet service and office solutions, all staffed by a population that faces an unemployment rate of nearly 80%, Kaylie has said.
Extraordinary Ventures provides 50 part- and full-time jobs, with another 90 people on a waiting list.
The thrift store will mark “a major expansion of the organization’s impact and visibility in the region and preserves an important community resource in downtown Carrboro,” Kaylie said.
“The thrift store is a great opportunity for us to double our size and significantly increase the number of job opportunities we can offer,” she said. “One of the best things about a thrift store is that it will allow the community to interact more directly with our employees and experience the benefits of inclusive employment firsthand.”
It also will preserve the thrift store’s mission of collaborating with local groups to support local residents with vouchers for clothing and other necessities. Vouchers are disbursed through Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools social workers, the Inter-Faith Council for Social Service, and the Refugee Community Partnership.
More partnerships with schools and community groups are possible, said Kaylie, who is a past president of the CHCCS PTA Council.
“I’m just really hoping that this thrift store will become a place of community celebration, where everyone belongs, everyone can interact, and we all do things that are good for the environment and good for business,” Kaylie said.
Pam Hemminger, a former Chapel Hill mayor and the chair of the Extraordinary Ventures Board of Directors, also emphasized the future expansion of the nonprofit’s mission.
“This project represents the best of what Extraordinary Ventures does — building sustainable businesses that strengthen individuals, families and the broader community,” Hemminger said. “We are excited about this new chapter in our development and to show what’s possible when inclusion is built into the heart of a business.”
Long history ends with new buildings, foreclosure
CommunityWorx closed Dec. 31 after a 13-year push through an ambitious building program, lagging community support and a major economic hit during the COVID pandemic shutdown.
It was a sharp decline for the former PTA Thrift Shop, which was founded in 1952 to support local schools by selling secondhand goods. The shop opened its Carrboro location in 1979, followed by a Chapel Hill store, which operated from 1980 to 2020.
In 2012, executive director Barbara Jessie-Black led a $5 million building campaign to replace the Carrboro location with a modern three-story, brick building. A second building was added next door — YouthWorx on Main — to provide local youth nonprofits with low-cost space.
But the building campaign consumed most of the thrift shop’s profits, creating a split with local PTAs and residents, some of whom ended their support of the thrift shop. In 2019, the National PTA sued over the thrift shop’s use of the “PTA” name, and it was renamed “CommunityWorx.”
By 2024, CommunityWorx still owed about $4 million on its loans and was facing foreclosure. Shared Visions Foundation Inc., a private foundation housed on Murphy School Road, bought the 1.5-acre property for $4.2 million as a foreclosure sale was pending.
Shared Visions used the thrift shop as collateral and had plans to continue leasing the space to CommunityWorx and YouthWorx, using rent payments to repay its loan. Jessie-Black remained at the helm of both operations until her death in November.
Jessie-Black told The N&O at the time that she and the CommunityWorx board made the best choices possible for the nonprofit’s future based on the information they had at any given time.
In a December news release, CommunityWorx board members praised Jessie-Black for her leadership and her “dedication to workforce development, social enterprise, and facilitating employment and stability for individuals facing barriers to entry.”
“The organization’s transition marks the end of its meaningful role in the community,” the release said.
This story was originally published January 5, 2026 at 3:41 PM.
