Barnes & Noble, once viewed as the Goliath to independent bookstores' David, is now making a nostalgia-filled return with the opening of dozens of bookstores across the country, including one in Lake Orion that opened Wednesday.
About 150 stores closed in the 2010s, — including the Barnes & Noble bookstore in Royal Oak in 2014 — primarily due to competition from online sales and Amazon. In the last year alone, though, the bookstore chain opened more stores than it had in the decade from 2009-19. The bookseller expects to open more than 50 new bookstores in 2024.
Last month, a Barnes & Noble opened in Rochester Hills. Another store is expected to open in Grand Rapids in 2025. On Wednesday, two more stores opened, along with the Lake Orion store, in Louisiana and Texas.
Barnes & Noble, in a news release announcing the opening of the Lake Orion store, 4852 South Baldwin Road, said it is "enjoying a period of tremendous growth" by employing a strategy its smaller competitors once used by handing over more local control to the stores.
That means no two stores are exactly alike. A Barnes & Noble less than 10 miles away, which opened in 2019 at The Village of Rochester Hills shopping center, is just over half the size of a traditional Barnes & Noble and features nonbook merchandise such as vinyl records, notebooks, board games, bottled water and Lego sets.
At the new store that opened Wednesday at Baldwin Commons, in a space formerly occupied by Nordstrom Rack, and near Boot Barn, Party City, DSW and Kohl’s, dozens of people lined up in front ahead of its opening at 10 a.m.
"It’s nice to see a Barnes & Noble opening," Jason Brzeg, who was one of the first shoppers to visit the Barnes & Noble in Lake Orion when it opened Wednesday, said. Brzeg, 30, and a Berkley resident, said it was refreshing to see a brick-and-mortar store opening instead of closing down, although he admitted he shops on Amazon.
"If I have my toes in both pools, I feel like I’m contributing to both and not completely giving away to a corporate competitor," Brzeg said.
Tess Barterian, 41, of Lake Orion, was there with her mom, who was in town visiting from Arizona. Barterian planned to work remotely from Barnes & Noble while her mother shopped. She knew it'd be a good place to work because she remembers the experience of visiting Barnes & Noble when she was younger.
"You can go in and no one bothers you and you can sit down and read for hours," she said.
Janine Flanigan, vice president of store planning and design at Barnes & Noble, calls the bookstore "a gathering place" that offers shoppers the experience of seeing and touching the books and talking with the store staff about book recommendations.
"My favorite is customers talking to each other," Flanigan said. "I mean, how many times, you would stand at a table and have your hand on a book, and a customer would go, 'Oh my gosh, you have to get that.' .. 'I cried all day' or 'I laughed all day.' But I think it is about the interaction and ... the environment that we create opening these bookstores."
While the bookstores have long been gathering places and continue to have cafes, the interior of the Barnes & Noble looks very different than the Barnes & Noble of 20 years ago, Flanigan said. The overall look is "light and airy," she said, with light oak bookshelves and a light paint color.
Each section is designed to take the shopper on a "journey throughout the store," Flanigan said.
The store also had a distinct smell, that of fresh paint and new books, which is what brought out three generations of shoppers to the store's opening.
"The smell of new books (is the) best smell ever," Meredith Johnston, 48, of Oxford, who was there with her mother and daughter, said.
Her mom, Jackie Melton, worked at a Barnes & Noble store for 25 years.
"I love them with all of my heart," said Melton, of Lake Orion.
The Lake Orion store is open Monday to Saturday from 10 a.m.-9 p.m. and on Sunday from 11 a.m.-7 p.m.
Contact Adrienne Roberts: amroberts@freepress.com.
Rebecca Borlace is an apprentice in the Free Press' High School Apprentice program this summer. Borlace is a rising senior at Novi High School.
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