Barnes & Noble's move to Tucson Mall part of go-small corporate plan

There was a time, boys and girls, when some of the best bookshops in Tucson could be found in our suburban malls.

B. Dalton Booksellers … Waldenbooks … Borders.

“I remember!” Jaime Cross confessed last week. “I remember the Waldenbooks store here at Tucson Mall. It was on the upper level, near Macy’s, I think. When I was young, we’d stop by every time we went to the mall to go shopping.”

Cross’s perspective is interesting because there is, once again, a bookstore at Tucson Mall. Barnes & Noble opened a new location there on Sept. 25, and the store’s manager? Cross.

Hers will be a familiar face to many visiting the new store. Cross grew up in Marana, attended Mountain View High School, and has worked at Barnes & Noble’s northwest-side location since 1999.

“It’s exciting being part of a brand-new store at such a familiar location,” Cross said. “It will be interesting, too, because this store is so much different than our two others in town. We need to learn who our shoppers will be. We want to find out what kind of books they like. It’s going to be fun getting to know them.”

The new Barnes & Noble store is located in the space formerly occupied by The Children’s Place, on the lower level near the mall’s glass elevator. With just 4,500 square feet, it is notably smaller than its two sister stores here. Unlike the others, it has no café, but the new B&N is literally filled — wall to wall — with books.

“With a smaller footprint, it feels like a traditional bookstore,” Cross said. “There are books everywhere you look. We’re hoping it will attract shoppers who didn’t know they wanted a book — they came to the mall looking for something else — but came in and found just the book they needed.”

The store will be particularly easy to find during the holidays: The Tucson Mall Santa Claus will be taking requests in the plaza right outside the front door.

“We’ll have plenty of picture books by then, I promise,” Cross laughed.

There was a time when bookstores were standard features in American shopping malls. From the late 1960s through the early 2000s, they dominated the market.

But rising rents, shrinking margins and a new bookseller called Amazon eventually led to their demise. The last Waldenbooks store in Tucson closed in January 2008.

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If the sight of a major bookstore nestled between an Old Navy and a Zales Diamond Store now seems strangely out of place, it is fitting this back-to-the-future moment should come from Barnes & Noble.

B&N became America’s largest bookseller the day it acquired B. Dalton in 1986.

Now in the midst of an aggressive expansion plan, with 65 new stores opening this year alone, Barnes & Noble is again thinking small.

“When the company decided to expand a few years ago, we thought a lot about what our new stores should look like,” said Janine Flanigan, vice president of store planning and design. “We’ve been known for having big, free-standing stores with cafés and plenty of floor space. Now you’ll start seeing stores of all shapes and sizes … and a lot of them will be in malls.”

Nowhere can this “go small” initiative be seen more visibly than Tucson. B&N’s northwest store at 7325 N. La Cholla Blvd. opened in 1996 and has 48,000 square feet. The eastside store at 5130 E. Broadway opened the following year and has 27,000 square feet.

“When we look at possible locations, our real estate division is now looking for spaces that can accommodate a great bookstore,” Flanigan said. “That’s the priority. We’d rather provide the community with a great bookstore than not do one because the space wasn’t large enough for a bookstore and café.”

Geography no doubt played a big part in the company’s decision to target Tucson Mall. The new store is roughly halfway between the two other Barnes & Noble stores here.

“It’s going to be fun,” Cross said. “The new store is small, so we won’t have everything, but we’ll find our niche … and I’m sure you’ll always be able to find the latest big books here.”

For the time being, at least, the new Tucson store will share resources with the Barnes & Noble location on La Cholla. Cross is managing both. A number of the northwest side’s 30 staff members will divide their time between the two locations.

Hours will match those of the mall itself: 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays, 11-8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and noon-6 p.m. Sundays.

Footnotes

• The reconstruction of Foothills Mall will at some point bring a wrecking ball to the two-story building now occupied by Barnes & Noble, Cross said. It is not yet known if B&N will move to a smaller space within the new “Uptown” project or to another location nearby. Phase One of Uptown is scheduled for completion in the fourth quarter of 2026.
• Tyler Meier, executive director of the University of Arizona Poetry Center, has received this year’s Friend of the Humanities Award from Arizona Humanities. Known previously as the Arizona Humanities Council, the statewide organization presented the award to Meier last weekend.
• Former Tucsonan Jeff Biggers will return to launch his and Andrew Davis’ new novel, “Disturbing the Bones,” Tuesday, Oct. 15. Co-sponsored by Stacks Book Club and the Oro Valley Public Library, the event will begin at noon at 1305 W. Naranja Drive. For more, visit stacksbookclub.com/events.
• The Tucson Festival of Books will present Amanda Jones, author of “That Librarian,” on Saturday, Dec. 7. The program will take place in the UA Campus Store, but the time has not yet been determined. Jones is a middle-school librarian who has stood firm against book-banning efforts in Louisiana.