Elm Street Books to Bloom Again

by Kevin Howell, PW Daily -- Publishers Weekly, 6/5/2006

There's good news for readers in New Canaan, Conn. Two months after closing, the three-year-old Elm Street Bookstore has found new investors, and plans to reopen in late August or early September.

"This is an amazing town and we always had a very loyal customer base and strong sales," said Kathleen Millard, the store's new manager who previously worked as the head of Elm Street's children's section and backlist buyer. "The problem was our rent was $300,000 a year for a space that was too big for us and in a location that was away from foot traffic." At 1,800 square feet, the new store will be half the square footage of the old location and is ideally situated between a clothing store and a café on the small town's main drag.

"We're so happy we can't stand ourselves," said Susan Rein, managing member of the store's new owner. The store previously had 15 investors, including NBC News anchor and New Canaan resident Brain Williams. "We didn't want to have as big of an operation as we had before," said Rein. " We now have eight investors including a new majority investor. We're a very different entity than before. We now feel like we know the business well enough to be able to resurrect the bookstore and make it a success. If this store breaks even, we'll be perfectly happy. No one invested to make comey. If we're profitable, hooray! But we're aiming to break even."

The new store is being designed by the previous location's architect, Louise Brooks.As the smaller team of investors and Millard use the empty shell of the new location to work on building permits and construction and zoning issues, they have lined the store's windows with galleys of forthcoming books picked up at the BookExpo America."It's hard to get work done here," said Millard. "We must have 15 people a day opening our door to find out when we'll open. Customers are so anxious to have us reopen. I'm sure when we do, we'll be very busy."