Borders Books: A painful time to be a megabookstore

Quote:

(Reuters) - Borders Group Inc inched closer to liquidation on Sunday after a bidding deadline passed without offers, the Wall Street Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter.

Bids for the second-largest U.S. book store retailer Borders were due at 5 p.m. Eastern Time Sunday ahead of a bankruptcy court auction scheduled for Tuesday, the paper said.

Last week, a bankruptcy judge had approved a plan to liquidate Borders after a sale to private equity firm Najafi Cos fell apart.

Borders filed for bankruptcy in February after struggling for years to compete with larger rival Barnes & Noble Inc and Amazon.com Inc as more consumers bought books through the Web. Online sales account for a tiny fraction of Borders sales.

Borders declined to comment to Reuters on the WSJ report.

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2011/07/17/business/business-us-borders-liquidation.html?_r=1&hp

anyone with a Borders gift card best use it ASAP

1 Reply

@hawkeye10,

That means more ghost malls in middle america.

Once one of those big stores go, the rest all go, too. My town is full of them, teetering-on-the-edge-of-death near-ghost malls, listing toward "CONTSRUCTION"-taped chain-link fencing around a pit in the ground that sits idle for years until someone wants to build apartments...

2 Replies

@patiodog,

Quote:

That means more ghost malls in middle america.

All of the Borders that I can recall using have been in Malls, either in the mall or on the property as a stand alone. Mall owners are already deep into the ****, they cant deal with very many major store chains going tits up. I think one major mall owner has already done bankruptcy, and I am sure that more will follow. I dont know which banks hold this debt, but some banks are going to be doing some major write-downs on assets soon. I think we know that between housing/construction/jobs/tax free internet/and home values that bric and mortar retail is never coming back to pre great recession levels. At some point soon the banks are going to have to deal with it. Right now mall property rents in my town are outrageous given the retail picture, because the landlords can not afford to lower rents and still make the mortgage. As a result firms are departing the property, and no one new comes in to take the space. Without a major uptick in retail sales, which aint going to happen, we know where this train goes, and it will not take long to get there now.

1 Reply

@patiodog,

It's hard for me to work up angst on these places. I personally don't care if they disintegrate. However...

In my childhood, our department stores were in the middle of town.

I remember some of the first out of town stuff, long before I was interested in urban design. Then a lot of towns died. So, now, from the practical point of view, what to do?

I'll start with community garden.
Ok, ok, too small an idea.

Next?

1 Reply

@hawkeye10,

My town may be ahead of yours, because I already see this happening. About the only things open at one big patch of real estate about two blocks from my house is the DMV and a crafts store. Otherwise, it's just a big patch of parking lot and shittily-designed, shittily-built, outdated building.

It would be a good park, actually, but I don't see any future for it for commerce.

The strip mall across the street will follow in step, of course -- unless the grocery box can keep the place afloat, in a town where other grocery stores have gone tits-up.

(Which is a shame, because every time they do, they leave another marginal neighborhood without ready access to fresh food...)

0 Replies

@ossobuco,

Quote:

I remember some of the first out of town stuff, long before I was interested in urban design. Then a lot of towns died. So, now, from the practical point of view, what to do?

I'll start with community garden.
Ok, ok, too small an idea.

Next?

Problem is (see my last post), where I live these places have also become the sole sellers of essential goods in all of the neighborhoods near the city center. The outlying, well-to-do folks have plenty of businesses catering to them -- even our very hippie-looking food co-op has opened a store in the western suburbs. But those of us who live closer to the capitol just have these groceries tied to the box-store economy. In some areas this will mean that much of Madison, which used to be rated by Forbes as the most liveable city in American, won't have groceries accessible to anyone without a car. I lived in a neighborhood like that in Chicago, and it was shitty for everyone.

Not that this shock won't be adjusted for eventually, but it also could mean thousand of kids spending their formative years without ever seeing a fresh vegetable.

No point to make here, just venting.

2 Replies

@patiodog,

Quote:

In some areas this will mean that Madison, which used to be rated by Forbes as the most liveable city in American

You realize that Madison still ranks in almost everyones top ten cities to live in....I grew up in Rockford so I have spent a good bit of time up there, and have a lot of ties to Madison re family and friends, and while I have not visited for a few years I have never experienced anything to not like about it. A disintegrating US economy lowers all boats, but Madison is still better off than almost everyone else.

Have you visited Rockford lately? My old sub division built early 1970's is now a crime ridden dump, as is much of the rest of the Town. I was in the CourtYard hotel on East State Street two years ago and heard gunshots as someone was killed in the Giovanni's parking lot. Who would have thunk it possible?

1 Reply

@patiodog,

Listening.

Have you connected to the university on this? There are plethoras of urban design sites online, some of them of actual interest among the total chaff and shittaroo. Look up the landscape architecture (I'll just mention that first, architecture, and planning departments locally. Be aware that landarchs and archs are licensed as planners, as at least we were in California.)

As you could guess some online stuff is complete twaddle.

If you get desperate, I could dig up serioso sites, Harvard good at least at the high end, or U Penn.

2 Replies

@ossobuco,

A letter from you, literate, descriptive, could be useful, in my opinion, and your area has a serious problem.

Not to nab you with stuff to do.

But, help may be out there.

0 Replies

@hawkeye10,

Quote:

A disintegrating US economy lowers all boats, but Madison is still better off than almost everyone else.

That's true. It's still not what it was when I moved here, and that was only about 8 years ago.

Haven't been down to Rockford at all. I've got distant family down there, but I've never met them.

I did some relief vet work down in that direction -- in Beloit -- last winter. Near Janesville, and same sort of deal: lots of people out of work; hard times.

I get on quite well with those folks, but they're certainly not big money makers. They'll have you fix up a bite from a dog fight, but they're no going to spring for anything medical.

I find Madison, per its reputation, to be a bit of an island. And the island-dwellers are a little smug. The real people in the state aren't doing so well. I do a low-income spay/neuter clinic up in Fond du Lac, and I get to help some folks who are really up against it, and are giving up more to come to us than most middle-class folks do to go to the full-price places. We're making real headway with the barn cat population (dairy farmers will do well against the market, if not against the big players in their own industry), but we've seen a lot more dogs where the owners just can't afford to take good care of them any more.

Same with their kids, of course. I think the Era of Easy Living, such as we knew it, is coming to an inevitable close.

1 Reply

@ossobuco,

Quote:

There are plethoras of urban design sites online, some of them of actual interest among the total chaff and shittaroo. Look up the landscape architecture (I'll just mention that first, architecture, and planning departments locally. Be aware that landarchs and archs are licensed as planners, as at least we were in California.)

As you could guess some online stuff is complete twaddle.

You know, that's not such a bad idea. The city's been doing **** work with it's renovation dollar the past few year -- million-dollar fountains around the capitol that are never turned on because of concerns about the potential infectiousness of the water, for instance.

Will see if this idea holds water in a couple of days, but it's more likely to if I've got something to hang a hat on.

How do you transform the site of a former midwestern shopping mall, anyway?

1 Reply

@patiodog,

By the way, if there's news of a geographically inappropriate progusion of brown recluse spiders in Southern Wisconsin in a few years, I know where it started.

0 Replies

@patiodog,

I don't know right this minute but I would have gotten a kick on being in a charette on the area and might have cooked it. First look local but consider Harvard and UPenn (I'm thinking landarch, but that is my bias. But never mind me, consider their design departments.

I have been getting rid of some of my stuff and have had trouble getting rid of one article in Landscape Architecture Magazine -- which I have to say I never gave a **** about, not the article, but the magazine. Still I saved this one article and pulled it out in my recent question re whether or not to throw it away -

and found it hard to look up online. Apparently that mag didn't archive stuff before '99. ****'em, they are probably four years old, like Pfeiffer's Munro.

The article was Can We Retrofit, and was about Raritan, New Jersey and a charette held about it by the New York Regional Planning Association. I can't throw it out since I can't find a link. Fascinating, and now I wonder if anything at all happened there.

I'll mail you a copy if you want though I figure you won't want that right now. I thought the group made great strides re the area in that article.

1 Reply

@ossobuco,

Adds - don't just listen to jargon as a screen. I expect you wouldn't, but I'm promoting you to speak up, at least for working up a real study and eventual charette.

There may have been some of these already - let me guess ineffective.

Feel free to ignore me, I don't always get into it and understand not.

0 Replies

BORDERS RIP

Quote:

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Borders Group will liquidate its remaining assets after efforts to find a buyer fell through, the bookstore chain announced Monday.
The nation's second largest book seller, which filed for bankruptcy protection earlier this year, currently operates 399 stores and employs approximately 10,700 workers.
The liquidation process is expected to start as soon as Friday, pending bankruptcy court approval, Borders said in a press release.
Mike Edwards, president of Borders Group, said in a written statement that he was saddened by the development and that the decision came despite "the best efforts" of all parties.
"We were all working hard towards a different outcome, but the headwinds we have been facing for quite some time, including the rapidly changing book industry, eReader revolution, and turbulent economy, have brought us to where we are now," Edwards said.
The announcement comes days after a deal with Direct Brands fell through.
Direct Brands, owned by private investment firm Najafi Companies, had proposed a plan to buy Borders' (BGPIQ) assets for $215.1 million and assume $220 million in liabilities.
But the group said Wednesday that the deal to keep Borders operating was "no longer supported by the deciding parties."
"The deciding parties' legal team and financial advisors have elected another option which is in contrast to what we had envisioned for the future of Borders," the company said.
Borders, the No. 2 bookstore chain after Barnes & Noble (BKS, Fortune 500), filed for bankruptcy protection in February when the company also announced that it would close 200 of its 659 stores.

http://money.cnn.com/2011/07/18/news/companies/borders_liquidation/index.htm?source=cnn_bin&hpt=hp_bn3

0 Replies

@ossobuco,

ossobuco wrote:

Adds, it is also lucky that myself and pals were in a hurry when we passed Rizzoli in New York. That could be the death of me.

I found out about the resurrection of Rizzoli several months ago. I keep forgetting to download this bright news to offer you some new year's cheer Osso.

A couple of blocks from the Flat Iron building.

2 Replies

@tsarstepan,

Excellent- that does cheer me up.

1 Reply

@ossobuco,

Conan O'Brien wrote:

Over the weekend a woman gave birth in a Barnes & Noble bookstore. Out of habit, the parents briefly looked over the newborn baby, then went home and bought a cheaper baby on Amazon

http://news.investors.com/technology-click/102513-676809-apple-jony-ive-videos-spawn-parodies.htm

1 Reply

@tsarstepan,

Quote:

Like dive bars and movie theaters, bookstores are becoming an endangered species in this city, as massive rents push out independent and national book sellers alike. There are still fantastic institutions in Manhattan, but their numbers have been seriously decimated—not just in the past decade or so, but going back to a time when the borough boasted nearly 400. Now, there are a decidedly diminished 106 remaining on the island.
In his latest mine of city data, Steven Melendez examined the last 60+ years of Manhattan's bookstore landscape, uncovering an unsurprisingly dismal trend. Where we begin our tale in 1950, the borough boasted 386 bookstores, including a great many along historic "book row" on 4th Avenue and a large congregation in the Financial District. The first big blow to bookstores came in early '80s, which saw a nearly 31% decrease from the previous decade. In 1981, there were 249 bookstores in Manhattan; followed by 243 in 1990; 204 in 2000; and a dismal 135 by 2010, a 33.8% decline in 10 years. Last year, there were just 106 bookstores in Manhattan, a whopping 21.4% decline in just four years.

Borders Books: A painful time to be a megabookstore

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