Rumors have been circulating around Seattle’s book world that Barnes & Noble’s University Village branch is closing. I just got off the phone with Terry Foster, Barnes & Noble’s Community Relations Coordinator, who confirmed that this is true. “It was a lease negotiation situation,” she says.
She didn’t want to answer questions about a timeframe for the store’s closure, saying, “They’re going to have a public announcement for that within the next two or three weeks.” Will the store re-open in a different location, then? “It’s a possibility.”
I’ll be keeping an eye out for the official Barnes & Noble announcement, and I’ll let you know when I hear something.
Lamonts, you’re welcome back any time!
My goodness, the retailers have been begging for a large-ish space that size to finally open up at U Village, which I’m sure intends to charge heaven and earth for rent. In fact, I wonder if they jacked B&N’s rent ridiculously high because they’ve got someone lined up to pay more already. Catering as it does to those who would never admit to being “the 99%” (much less declaim it) U Village seems to have defied the recession almost entirely. I’ve had to go to the Apple store there a couple times and I always worry I look too downtrodden somehow to set foot in the area, and imagine security cameras shadowing my every move.
@2 those are there for your protection, citizen.
Papers, please.
@2 Word.
A friend of mine who has worked at that store for about four years was told that the store will not be re-opening in a new location and that he should start looking for a new job because there isn’t much space at other stores.
I believe the date they gave him is February.
Dead-tree books:
This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper.
oh my goodness death of the chain bookstores.
Viva 3rd Place Books and Elliott Bay – we are so lucky to have these independent stores in Seattle – let’s keep patronizing them, not Amazon, for all our dead tree needs.
I really like that B&N too. If I wanted a quick book in a comfortable place to read, I went there. I guess I’ll just shift all my book buying to the U Bookstore. I usually only buy my signed copies there, because the atmosphere is meh… but meh is better than nothing at all.
Awesome! Less trees cut down! Win.
#occupyuv
A coworker of my wife who also works there said that Barnes & Noble managment wanted to renew the lease and tried to negotiate, but the owners of the shopping center refused. She said she was going to be out of a job, and didn’t mention anything about a relocation.
@11 Sounds like UV to me — worked there for 10 years. First they (Stuart Sloan and Co.) started with ejecting the local small businesses — jacking up the rent so it was completely untenable for a modest locally owned business to even break even. Then they shuttled in the big corporate names and brands at a lower monthly premium than they offered the previous tenants who could not afford. Now they’ve come for BnN probably because, through years of gossip about that place I’ve heard, they simply jacked the price up as their old long term lease has expired. UV is cut throat. The arrival of MSFT “could” (I said COULD) have something to do with it too. Never met a MSFT exec who could stoop to the level of a dead tree addition of something.
To all employees of UV, don’t believe a word you hear when they tell you your job is safe — even leading up to the holiday season. Unless you’re at QFC or Bartell’s, everything there has always been interchangeable. Where I worked they said the same thing, “at least till February” right around this time of year. A few days before Thanksgiving, we were given 5 minutes notice and were unceremoniously closed — not by UV, but by the flagship store in UV who decided to get the fuck out when they could. This doesn’t exonerate them either. But, expect it.
Good luck. I know a lot of you who work at that Barnes and Noble and I wish you well. Happened to us last year as well. . .
@9: Nice. Want to say “Awesome!” to the faces of the people who will lose their jobs?
I also wanna echo @10
If the #occupyseattle people want to have the greatest effect, I would suggest University Village. Stuart Sloan would seriously hire Blackwater and it would probably turn out to be a massacre.
Sad to say the least but not surprising. About a year ago they redid the upstairs and blocked off part of the area that used to hold books.
I hope they reopen but my guess is since they have a location downtown and one at Northgate the U-Village store is dead.
Wide World Books and Maps, locally owned is still open in Wallingford. Besides travel guide books, maps and travel gear they carry popular fiction and non fiction. Right across from the Wallingford Center on the Wallingford Av side.
@16, I shop at Wide World all the time. I’ve got a stack of books bought there on my desk waiting to be read.
U Village is a weird place. I actually like that B&N; as chain stores go, it’s the best I’ve ever been in. But the shopping center is just peh-KYOO-liar. I took a night class over that way last year, and it seemed natural to grab a quick dinner there before, but all the little places that I used to go to are recently gone, replaced by some truly scary chain places — the nastiest Blue C Sushi ever, the horrifying sports-bar-cum-pickup-joint “Sonrisa Modern Mex”, and the crappy and creepy Boom Noodle. Designed to within an inch of their lives, filled with android mechanical-grin waitrons, all these places are like eating plastic food in a dimly-lit furniture store. Fucking horrible. A crappy place like the food court at Northgate seems positively warm and human in comparison.
Too bad, but not surprising. I’m there often and will miss it a lot, but its true that I use it mainly to browse books and DVDs, looking for interesting things to borrow/rent elsewhere, and very rarely purchase anything.
I wonder what on earth Sloan has up his sleeve to take over that gigantic space (which was formerly a boring branch of Lamont’s)? Something soul-less I’m afraid, as the once-marvelous U Village continues to loose the semi-funky PNW character that made it unique and great. I’d guess that what’s happening is the result of the place being owned and operated by some very rich people who live in a very rarefied atmosphere; that new Tiffany store is a Really Bad Sign…
Wow…I guess that is it then. There will now be absolutely no reason to patronize U-Village. Without Barnes and Noble all that is left is a bounch of overpriced junk that appeals to the conspicuous consuming housewives of Lurelhurst and Bellevue.
fuckin shame!
You people have been smoking too much. Barnes and Noble was like a bomb dropped on local businesses when it opened. Like a Walmart moving onto the ave. it devastated the local retailers in areas other than just books. Ever notice that it has little floor space dedicated to books anymore. Thank god their pasturized retail model is dead. Hopefully a locally spawned bookstore will replace them. There are very few that have survived the Barnes and Noble onslaught.