An ongoing lesson of Capitol Hill’s retail economy is how geographically connected its fate is with the success and failures of the closest major shopping areas — downtown and University Village. This entanglement makes this news about the struggles of national chain Barnes & Noble all the more important to the future success of Capitol Hill’s Elliott Bay Book Co.:
Yesterday, I broke the news that University Village Barnes & Noble will be closing. (Seattle Times reported on this story last night. I’m sure the credit to Slog for breaking the news was somehow accidentally removed during the editing process. Right, guys? Right?)
This morning, I received a message from a Barnes & Noble U Village employee who would, for obvious reasons, prefer to remain anonymous.
They are not re-opening another location. The lease for the space was up and BN tried to low-ball UVillage management…
The Slog says the final day for the enormous — and usually full of people — Barnes & Noble will be right after Christmas — December 28.
The shuttering at U Village still leaves another massive Barnes & Noble just downhill on Pine — though the downtown Borders finally closed.
But the closure seems like it can only be good news for Elliott Bay. In the middle of a reinvented bookselling industry, Elliott Bay’s Peter Aaron has maintained that his store is succeeding thanks in large part to his move to the Hill. Though the retail “halo” effect many might have hoped for hasn’t completely materialized — or at least it didn’t for Everyday Music which will leave its space neighboring Elliott Bay as its lease runs out in 2012 — Elliott Bay appears to have found a way to sustain itself as a book retailer. The fall of another nearby giant should only help, right?
…since that B&N has been just down the road from them since the early 90s.
…will people that used to go to the U Village B&N go to Elliott Bay and the University Bookstore (more likely the latter) or will they simply go to BN.com or Amazon?
I actually love and use both book stores. B&N is probably one of the best stocked stores for Tech based books and manuals. I will personally be sad to see this resource go away as EB Books has never filled this niche very well or at all.
Elliot Bays success is because they have an incredible staff (we can buy books anywhere) and many like to actually walk into a book store and browse. I hope that this helps them out but parking would help them even more.
I guess the next time i need to upgrade my High Availability Enterprise Networking books I will have to visit Amazon…. So unsatisfying.
Have you tried Ada’s Technical Books on the Hill around the corner from Harvard Exit and Jo Bar? They have lots of good tech books and helpful people, too.
Park under QFC a couple of blocks away in the Harvard Market and buy anything there and get 90 minutes of validated parking. Plenty of time for a trip to Elliott Bay Books, Retrofit Home, and a number of other great Pike/Pine retailers.
For tech books, have you tried this place on the hill?
http://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2010/04/02/seattles-first-
….Actually for those of us that live near U Village and far far from Elliot Bay and like being able to just walk to the bookstore as well as buy calligraphy supplies, journals and random odds and ends there, it’s actually really sad. That store was beautiful.
I love Elliot Bay, but it’s not convenient, and the closing of bookstores (especially one that sells different types of books) is never a good thing.
There is parking under Elliot Bay’s store. The entrance is just south of the store entrance.
On the flip side Elliot Bay has the most amazing collection of design and architecture books …
Because locals lose their jobs.
I love Elliot Bay Books, but for those of us in NE Seattle who don’t have the precious hours to traverse the agonizing and hellish commute over the Montlake Bridge, search endlessly for parking on Capitol Hill, and finally facing the Hobson’s Choice of exorbitant meter rates or criminal parking lot fees, having B&N in our backyard was a wonderful boon that will be sorely missed by U-District, Laurelhurst, Ravenna, Hawthorne Hills, and View Ridge residents of all ages. Kudos to EB for maintaining its viability — I was worried that when it moved that would be its end — but B&N was a GREAT chain store, with an amazing selection (especially magazines, which neither U Book Store nor EB come close to), and a welcome respite from the snooty stores at U Village. RIP, B&N…