Barnes & Noble, 3040 M St., NW
Barnes & Noble is having a renaissance. Under new CEO James Daunt, the bookstore chain is doing away with its cookie-cutter spaces stuffed with board games and toys, and giving its business model a new focus—books. The strategy: to make each existing and forthcoming location feel like a hyperlocal indie bookshop. Among B&N’s 50 new branches is a three-story Georgetown store, which in October will reopen in the very same building it was displaced from more than a decade ago.
While the new location will still sell vinyl and stationery, the fresh B&N model leans into creative, locally focused curation of books as its main moneymaker. A team of mostly DC-area locals has been hired to run the Georgetown store, and management has artistic liberty to “add the local flavor” and curate content “based on what they think is important for the community,” says B&N spokesperson Janine Flanigan (the team’s Instagram recommendations include The Briar Club by Kate Quinn, set in 1950s DC).
The previous Georgetown B&N was forced to shutter after losing a leasing battle in 2011, which was a dark time for booksellers. Cheap Amazon online book sales, Kindle and iPad ebooks, and a slew of Amazon brick-and-mortar stores packed punch after punch for long-time staples like top competitor Borders, which filed for bankruptcy in 2011. B&N closed several national locations in the interim, but has maintained a handful of stores in the DC suburbs. Last year, it reopened its Reston outpost, and Flanagan says “it is very likely that we will find another location” in DC.
The resurgence of reading among Gen Z-ers has helped kickstart the comeback. BookTok, a corner of TikTok that has upped book sales among young people, “has been a contributor to our success,” says Flanigan. Now, when a book trends on the social media platform, B&N jumps to assemble a display table of similar titles.
When the Nike store that moved into the Georgetown B&N’s space closed, property manager Lincoln Property reached out to the company about returning. They’d noticed the chain’s rebrand, says David Dochter, a real estate advisor who represents Lincoln Property and brokered the lease agreement. They wanted a tenant willing to rent all three floors of the building, and thought a bookstore would diversify Georgetown’s retail options. B&N was interested because its previous store in the building “did very, very well for us,” says Flanigan, who says they’d never wanted to close in the first place.
The store’s original June 19 opening date has been pushed back twice (Flanigan faults the neighborhood’s strict permitting process). An in-store café will open “just a teensy bit later” than the store’s fall debut, though that permitting has experienced delays, too.
Besides selling books, the company has another goal: when customers step into the store, they should want to spend a lot of time there. It’s aiming to become a social hub for the neighborhood, a go-to spot for book events, dates, and after-school hangouts. “There’s an omni-channel world that exists, and the need for gathering, in-person events, socializing––as far as humans go, that’s not going anywhere,” says Dochter.
