Powell's is closing

Book warehouse was in South Loop since the early '70s

08/12/2009 10:00 PM

By MICAH MAIDENBERG
Editor

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Photos by MICAH MAIDENBERG/Staff



A customer combs through the stacks in soon-to-be-closing Powell's Bookstore.

Powell’s Bookstore will shutter its South Loop branch Sept. 1, ending a run of more than 30 years in the neighborhood.

Brad Jonas, owner of Powell’s Chicago, said rising rents for the 8,000 square foot, bi-level space at 828 S. Wabash pressured the company to make the decision. He declined to state his last rent.

“We’ve been in the South Loop since the 1970s and we love the South Loop, love the people,” Jonas said. “But the rents are getting high. Though it’s a problem that’s probably good for the neighborhood.”

The neighborhood has transformed dramatically since Powell’s storefront opened, Jonas said, shifting from a warehouse district to residential. The South Loop store, he explained, was essentially a Powell’s warehouse that was open for retail sales. And the retail side couldn’t justify the size of the store.

“We were the oddball — the shipping and receiving place,” he said. “It’s a more glamorous area. We got there with good intentions on the retail side. I don’t think the retail was as strong as we hoped.”

The store will be consolidated with one other warehouse into an 80,000 square foot building near Midway Airport. Powell’s Hyde Park and Lincoln Park retail outlets will remain open.

The announcement came on the heels of news that Prairie Avenue Books would close this fall unless a buyer emerged to snap up the business from longtime store owners Wilbert and Marilyn Hasbrouck.

While Powell’s has a strong online presence, Jonas said booksellers operating from storefronts are facing a difficult set of challenges, including competition from online retailers who often don’t charge sales tax.

“I think bricks-and-mortar in the book business is going to be a hard thing to do if people don’t own their own property and internally subsidize the thing,” he said. Jonas owns the building that houses his branch in Hyde Park.

Jerry Karp, owner of the building that houses Powell’s location in the South Loop, is sorry to see the store close.

“Brad Jonas was a terrific business guy, very dedicated to the South Loop,” Karp said. “I hate to see the internet taking over the brick-and-mortar stores. That’s going to change business for years to come.”

Albert Muniz, a professor of business at DePaul University, says such “information goods” as books, movies and music lend themselves more to the efficiencies of online retailing.

Not only do Amazon customers avoid sales taxes, the company’s cost structures are simply better than those of small firms, Muniz noted: big online retailers have millions of customers and can only pay publishers for books when customers make a purchase.

Muniz, himself a resident of the South Loop, was disappointed to hear that Powell’s would close.

Spots like Powell’s and Prairie Avenue Books — Muniz also cited Gourmand, the old Printers Row coffeehouse — were important “third places.”

“The third place is not home. It’s not work, but a center of social community congregation, a place where communities interact with people,” he said. “Those are extremely important in keeping the hominess of a neighborhood.”

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