A Barnes & Noble was previously located at 150 East 86th Street (Google Maps)
Book it. On Monday morning, Barnes & Noble announced that its new bookstore at 1556 Third Avenue (corner of 87th Street) is set to have its grand opening on July 12.
This will mark the return of B & N to the neighborhood after the closure of its previous store at 150 East 86th Street during the summer of 2020.
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“It is very good news to bring our bookstore back to the Upper East Side. It was very sad to close in the depths of the pandemic and [it’s] especially pleasing now to reopen with one that is so dramatically more attractive. We take over a beautiful building with an old-style character with which it is a pleasure to work in creating the new bookstore,” said James Daunt, CEO of Barnes & Noble back in November when they first announced they were returning to the neighborhood.
In March, NPR highlighted Barnes & Noble’s remarkable turnaround as the company now plans to open 30 new stores this year. In several cases, B & N is returning to areas it had previously abandoned, and even taking over a few former Amazon bookshop locations.
Turns out B & N’s biggest strategy change came from taking a page used by independent bookshops. Now, the company is empowering their local Barnes & Noble shops to order books based on the preferences of their local readers.
It’s “a huge shift, frankly, in philosophy for us as a bookseller,” DeVito says. “It’s not an algorithm. It’s not something that’s dynamically pulled from a code. It’s very much a — I read this, I loved it, I know this area really gravitates towards beekeeping books, so I’m going to create the best beekeeping display I can because this is my local store.”
To stay up to date with Barnes & Noble’s Upper East Side location you can follow them on Instagram here.
Will you be publishing their marketing releases until then?