Powell’s to Renovate Flagship Store
Earlier this month in a memo to employees, CEO Miriam Sontz of Powell’s Books in Portland, Ore., announced plans for “seismically updating” the flagship store of the iconic retailer. The renovation will affect the southeast quadrant of the city block the store occupies, commonly known as the Green and Blue Rooms.
“This is the last piece of a long-term movement towards fully upgrading the entire Burnside Building,” wrote Sontz, referring to a project that dates back to 1990. The new construction, which will take place from January through June next year, will maintain the current store footprint and provide new lighting, windows, and roof. The design review process will take place this summer. The Green and Blue Rooms will be closed during construction, but the store will remain open throughout the project on its regular 365-days-a-year schedule.
Politics & Prose Launches Literary Magazine
This week Politics and Prose Bookstore in Washington, D.C., became the latest bookstore to add a literary journal, District Lines, volume 1, summer 2013, which it printed on Opus, its Espresso Book Machine. It will promote the journal with a reading at the store next month by some of the contributors.
District Lines includes previously unpublished essays, poems, sketches, photographs, and remembrances of the people, places, and traditions of the Washington community. Among them are memories of a castanet-playing handyman who was a fixture in the neighborhoods around Capitol Hill and poems about the Zamboni machine at a Capitals hockey game. “As store owner, we couldn’t be prouder of this P&P ‘first,’ ” wrote Bradley Graham and Lissa Muscatine on the store Web site. “Our only regret is that we couldn’t include every submission we received. But on the bright side, we’re already planning volume 1, number 2.”
