The campus bookstore isn’t what it used to be.
That was a primary reason for the March decision by university officials to relocate the William & Mary Bookstore from its location at the intersection of Duke of Gloucester Street and North Henry Street in Merchants Square to the Triangle Building on Prince George Street about a quarter mile northwest.
W&M Bookstore’s lease in Merchants Square, where it has been for two decades, ends June 30 and the new location will be open ahead of the fall semester that begins in August, according to Eden Harris, associate director of marketing, administration and licensing with the university’s Office of Auxiliary Services.
The move represents significant reduction in floor space for the bookstore. The space it currently occupies is about 25,000 square feet. The new location in the Triangle Building will be less than a fifth of that, at 3,875 square feet.
Several factors led to the decision to move now, including the end of the term of the bookstore’s lease with Colonial Williamsburg, and the end of a contract term with Barnes & Noble College, a division of the national retail bookseller that partners with universities to offer the services and merchandise they typically need. Barnes & Noble College will continue to operate the new bookstore through a contract with W&M. Also, the move puts the bookstore closer in proximity to W&M students, Harris said.
These factors “allowed W&M to pursue a new location that will offer a better overall operating model in an ever-changing retail industry,” said W&M Auxiliary Services Director Cindy Glavas in an emailed statement. “With the W&M Bookstore set to offer a growing presence online and maintain a smaller physical presence for sales, less square footage is required.”
W&M will be paying significantly less rent, because commercial leases are usually based on square footage. In Merchants Square, commercial space generally runs about $40 to $50 per square foot per year, although there can be variations, according to Jeff Duncan, Colonial Williamsburg vice president for real estate.
A listing earlier this week on the website of RJS & Associates, Inc., which is the agency handling the leasing of the space in the Triangle Building, identified the yearly rent as $18 per square foot for the base rental rate with an additional $2.10 for tenant charges.
But the rate of the rent was not a point of contention. Both parties describe the parting of ways between the W&M Bookstore and Colonial Williamsburg as amicable.
“Colonial Williamsburg has been a good partner over the years,” Harris said. Duncan said that Colonial Williamsburg shares that warm regard.
According to CW spokesman Joe Straw, CW owns properties that are officially part of Merchants Square, but there are “commercial businesses in the neighborhood in buildings not owned by the foundation.”
The new location will offer a better financial model in an industry that has changed, according to Harris. The bookstore simply does not need the large space that it has occupied in Merchants Square.
In the Triangle Building, the bookstore will focus on W&M merchandise as well as general school supplies. They will also sell a limited selection of fiction and nonfiction books.
Conspicuously lacking will be several prominent features of the current location. There will be no sections for technology, toys and games. Neither will there be a cafe as in the current location, but Harris said that the bookstore will encourage patronage of two eateries that share tenancy of the Triangle Building, The Bake Shop Bakery & Coffee Bar and Rick’s Cheese Steak Shop.
There will also not be a physical textbook presence on-site. According to Harris, students will be able to place orders online and “will be able to view availability for rentals, new, used and digital formats. For students that order hard copy textbooks, the store can ship either to a home address or make (them) available for in-person pick-up at the beginning of each semester.”
The changes in the textbook industry have left nearly all the stakeholders reeling, according to James V. Koch, Board of Visitors Professor of Economics and President Emeritus at Old Dominion University and an expert on college textbooks. About a quarter of students are using digital forms of their textbooks, another quarter are buying new textbooks and the remaining half are renting or sharing books, Koch said.
Authors, publishers and bookstores are finding it difficult to make this new model work, Koch said. Bookstores are under severe profit pressures and finding it difficult to deal with the world where students order a book form Amazon and it shows up at their door.
“The campus bookstore cannot exist on textbook sales,” Koch said. “They have to sell merchandise.”
As for the space the bookstore will vacate this summer, Duncan said that Colonial Williamsburg is in active negotiations with potential tenants. He was unable to identify specific businesses that might move in, but said that Colonial Williamsburg prioritizes a unique shopping experience in Merchants Square, including local entrepreneurs, stores that visitors and shoppers won’t see anywhere else, as well as a handful of respected national companies.
