Bookstore to expand, move to Juliet’s

As students rush to the campus bookstore to plan for the semester ahead, Vassar College is setting its plans in motion for a new bookstore site: the Juliet Building at the corner of Raymond Avenue and Collegeview Avenue. The proposed space is currently occupied by the Juliet Café and Billiards.

In a statement sent to Vassar students on Dec. 18, College President Catharine Bond Hill announced the College’s intention to move the store from the College Center to the off-campus location. Construction is tentatively scheduled to begin in early 2009. If the College is able to follow that timetable, the bookstore will open halfway through the 2009-2010 academic year.

Vassar bought the block of buildings that includes Juliet’s in 2001 through its real estate subsidiary, College Properties, LLC.

“Many of the trustees and the president had been talking for years about trying to get control over that building and had been working on it,” said Vice President of Finance and Administration Elizabeth Eismeier. The College has worked with local business leaders, artists and politicians since it purchased the building to collaborate on plans for the historic space.

“Our first inclination, when we became the controlling interest in the Juliet building,” said Eismeier, “was [if it could] be restored as a theater.” The College had even hired a theater restoration consultant in the early days of planning. Eventually, however, the theater plan was abandoned.

“After we did the broad-based survey and put that together with what we had learned about theater operations, it came down in favor of retail and taking a solid retail operation like a bookstore and putting it there,” said Eismeier.

The design of the bookstore is still in early planning stages, but Eismeier said that the College is envisioning a space where students can gather for readings and small shows, in addition to shopping for textbooks and other essentials. “Our hope is that, as it is a bigger space…it can be run as a full-scale retail operation with longer hours and a better selection of goods and services,” said Eismeier. Moving into the Juliet building gives the bookstore 10,000 square feet of retail space, nearly 4,000 square feet more than it currently occupies. The store will also be open for longer, regular business hours.

The renovation will also complement the Arlington district’s road construction and the College’s plans for the north edge of the campus, which has already begun.

Sofia Galazka, the owner of the Juliet Café and Billiards, agreed to a three-year lease on the property in December 2006. Her lease will expire next January. Galazka, who managed the business before buying it in January 2006, said that while she had heard rumors for years that the College was planning to use the Juliet building space, she had no idea that the College would make their decision at this time. “My customers used to tell me, ‘They [the College] are planning something,’ but it was nothing serious,” Galazka said.

“I love being around Vassar students and I had been really planning to do a lot,” said Galazka. Her plans included opening the Juliet’s former projection rooms as upper-level space, if allowed to renew her lease. She said that in her time as owner, she had developed a regular customer base, and shifted the café’s demographic more toward student and family business.

When she proposed these renovations to College Properties, LLC, however, they told her to wait.

“Then,” she said, “I started to push for information.” She met with Director of Investments and Capitol Project Finance Steve Dahnert and representatives from real estate manage firms in December, after she inquired about College employees coming in to measure and examine sections of the building such as the basement. “I thought maybe they were going to talk about…[renewing] my lease, but then they told me they’re going to do this [bookstore construction],” she said.

Galazka expressed frustration with the way in which the process was handled, saying that she disliked working with so many intermediate companies rather than hearing about the plans earlier and directly from the College.

“I’m really going to miss this place,” she said, “It’s my first business and now I have to get the money to move again,” she said. Right now she, with the aid of College Properties, LLC and River Management, another real estate management firm, is looking for a new location. She hopes that she can stay in Arlington. “It’s hard, very hard. But I’m try[ing] to be strong and keep going.”

Eismeier said that this announcement was, in part, released so early to allow Galazka to continue what
Eismeier called a “thriving business” that draws “people from all over the area.”

“She’s very hard-working,” said Eismeier of Galazka, “she’s been a very good tenant for us, and we want to see her move to a location where she can keep her business going.”

For her part, Galazka is looking at property and hopes to buy, not rent, a storefront in the future. They own the building, they can do what they want,” Galazka said. “I’m going to find a spot and keep in touch with people, keep them coming. I’d really love to keep in touch with Vassar students.”

Members of the Vassar and Arlington communities have expressed concern for the impact the new store will have on the character of the area—particularly if the College continues to operate the campus bookstore as a part of the Barnes and Noble College Division.

As a “college partner” of Barnes and Noble, the current campus bookstore operates as what is known as a “hybrid” store; the computer system’s software is run by the Barnes and Noble corporation, although the company itself has little to do with the bookstore’s day-to-day operation. The current store is managed by Barnes and Noble but employs College workers who are members of the Communication Workers of America (CWA) Local 1120, said bookstore manager Cathy Black-Benson.

This arrangement could change with the proposed move. While it is early in the planning process, the bookstore CWA workers are concerned that changing the nature of the bookstore will eliminate their jobs altogether. The College will open a bid for store management later in the planning process, and the winning bidder will have say over any labor negotiations—including whether or not to employ union-affiliated College workers.

“The CWA believes they [the College] cannot subcontract our work if it reduces our hours or results in layoff,” said CWA Business Agent Carl Bertsche. He added that such a change may be in breach of the collective bargaining agreement the union signed with the school in Jan. 2006. That contract, he said, expires in June 2010.

“The store will have to be a more traditional retail operation,” said Eismeier, adding that the College’s human resources department will work with the CWA to ensure that all workers are happy with the transition to the new store, either in the new store or at other, union-affiliated positions on campus.

Addressing concerns about the larger store pushing out smaller businesses, Eisemeier said any bidder would have to allow for “a niche to be carved out” for local business, such as the 60-year-old local bookstore, The Three Arts. “It would not look like a chain store,” even if the building was operated by Barnes and Noble, said Director of Media Relations Jeffrey Kosmacher.

Walter Effron, who owns and manages The Three Arts, said that he is not too concerned with the College’s plans.

“The [campus] bookstore has never been a proactive, aggressive operation,” he said, adding that his store fills a specific market need. “To some extent [a new store] would mean more traffic,” he said, “Though this isn’t necessarily what I would have thought of as help, there might be positive sides.”

Effron said he doesn’t know the specifics of the plan, but is not particularly worried about his future.
“For a book person, just in general, it wouldn’t be an improvement to see our store eliminated…there’s a always a certain element of the population who are always happy to come into a store like mine, and it could not exist, really, unless it was in proximity to the College.”

On campus reactions to the announcement were mixed. Raluca Besliu ’11 disagreed with the idea. “It will be incovenient for students,” she said, “you can’t just go pick something up.” She added that it will be a pain to carry textbooks back to many of the residential houses from the off-campus location.

Elizabeth Bock ‘09, a member of the campus bookstore advisory committee said that while her committee was not consulted about the move, she supports the idea. “I feel it will be beneficial to have a larger bookstore that can really be used as a community space and I am also excited about the prospects for the space currently occupied by the bookstore,” she said in an e-mailed statement.

A survey given to students last spring found that two-thirds of students were open to the idea of moving and expanding the bookstore.