|
|
|
Barnes & Noble will be packing up and moving across the street to Kitsap Mall, hopefully to open in November |
Although Kitsap Mall officials won’t confirm any plans, it appears to be official that Barnes & Noble Booksellers will relocate its Silverdale store into the space soon to be left vacant by Gottschalks when the department store closes its doors this month.
Reports indicate that Barnes & Noble has purchased the 50,000-square-foot anchor building and plans to occupy 32,000 square feet of it. The remainder of the space will be leased to Cost Plus World Market, a retailer headquartered in Oakland, California, which sells casual furniture and accessories with an international flavor, as well as gourmet grocery items from around the world.
As with most Barnes & Noble properties, the new store at the mall reportedly will sell music, DVDs, gifts and games as well as books. A full-sized children’s section will be available and a cafe serving Starbucks coffee will round out the store’s offerings.
The move to the mall will double Barnes & Noble’s footprint in Silverdale and will allow the retail giant to own its local property. Its current location, 16,000 square feet on Randall Way, is leased space.
The new location could open as early as November.
Barnes & Noble has 681 stores in the United States with sales in the last year totaling $4.4 billion The company also owns the regional B. Dalton Bookseller, Doubleday, Bookstop and Bookstar bookstore chains.
Cost Plus has 266 stores across the country. The company completed an initial public offering in 1996 and trades on the NASDAQ national market under the symbol CPWM.
Gottschalks announced on March 1 that it was closing its Silverdale location, shortly after Mervyn’s announced it would be closing its 76,000-square-foot store in March 2007. Rumors of Barnes & Noble’s move started soon after Gottschalks’ announcement, with confirmation that a tenant improvement permit had been issued to the bookseller at the Kitsap Mall’s address.
It’s been rumored that high-end retailer Nordstrom is considering setting up shop in the vacated Mervyn’s space at the mall. But that just isn’t so according to Michael Boyd, a spokesman for the Seattle-based retailer. Nordstrom’s has never had a presence in Kitsap County except for operating one of its discount Rack outlets for a short time in downtown Bremerton about 25 years ago.
However, Kohl’s, a fast-growing, Milwaukee-based retailer may be looking seriously at the Mervyn’s space. The company earlier announced plans to open about 200 new stores in 2006 and 2007 — including some in the Pacific Northwest. The company, which has been described as a cross somewhere between Macy’s and Mervyn’s, already operates in California.
Dan Engelhard, senior manager at Kitsap Mall, stated that negotiations with potential new stores at the mall had not been finalized, and declined to comment specifically on these recent reports. Once deals are closed, though, he said, “We will shout it to the rooftops.”. | 
