Penn signs deal for new bookstore

The University agreed late last week to replace The Book Store with a new Barnes and Noble superstore at 36th and Walnut streets that will be managed by the national chain and owned by Penn, officials announced yesterday. The new store is slated to open in fall 1998 and, at 50,000 square feet, will be almost twice the size of the current book store. Barnes and Noble will assume management of The Book Store July 1. It will remain the official University bookstore and students will still be able to use their PennCards to charge merchandise at the new store. In addition to selling most textbooks, the store will also offer non-required books and University clothing and paraphernalia. It will also include a music section, a cafe that serves Starbucks coffee and a seating area. The store will offer 200,000 books and over 2,000 periodicals. The Computer Connection, which is currently located in The Book Store, will be relocated to the site of the new store. Barnes and Noble executive Janine Von Juergensonn said the new store would offer the same textbook prices as the current bookstore. She also said Barnes and Noble would boost the number of used books the bookstore sells because the company is affiliated with the country's largest used book retailer. "We want to be the most convenient, best-priced bookstore for students and faculty," she said. Executive Vice President John Fry said the University will benefit from having an outside company run its official bookstore. Barnes and Noble currently operates 340 campus book stores across the country. "I often feel burdened by how many things we run here when the market could really provide them," he said. He added that the University would let Barnes and Noble officials design the building for the new bookstore before taking the plans through committees of students and faculty members for approval. Fry also said the store will help the University satisfy some of its strategic goals. The store, which will be open until at least 11 p.m., will help increase campus safety by drawing students and other customers out onto the streets later at night, he said. And moving the store frees up another site for an academic building on Locust Walk, the campus' academic center, he said. Fry said University President Judith Rodin's administration would make a decision about what to do with the current bookstore building at 38th street and Locust Walk within the next six months. The University will build the new bookstore on property it bought from the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority in 1980 with a provision that the University would develop the plot. The city has fined Penn $240,000 for not building on the site yet, according to Marie Witt, an assistant to Vice President for Business Services Steve Murray, who worked on the project. Yesterday, Fry said the city might lower the fine or absolve Penn of its responsibility altogether now that the institution is planning to build on the site. He also said the new bookstore will be only the beginning of development on the site, which runs between Walnut and Sansom streets and from 36th to 37th streets up to Gimbel Gymnasium. "The bookstore is the first stake in the ground saying that we want to develop the area," Fry said. He added that the University was considering using the site to build a hotel or add more stores or other structures. A working residential study done by administrators proposed converting Grad Tower B into undergraduate housing near the site. Under the agreement reached late Thursday night, the University and Barnes and Noble will share the start-up costs for the bookstore. The University will pay an estimated $8 million in construction costs for the new building, Fry said. Von Juergensonn said the company will pay for the store's initial inventory and interior design costs. The company will pay the University a guaranteed income of $1.3 million a year or 12 percent of the stores gross sales up to $20 million, and 14 percent of the sales above that figure. Currently, The Book Store grosses $11.6 million a year, which would net the University an income of $1.39 million annually under the new deal. Von Juergensonn said her company hopes to sell $15 million of merchandise a year, which would give the University an annual income of $2.1 million from the store.