2008 Woodie Awards
Vote Absentee
How about a bookstore of ... books?
Darryl Campbell
Issue date: 3/31/08 Section: Viewpoint
I sometimes wonder if the proposal for Eddy Street Commons really is going to create the "college town" atmosphere it's supposed to. After all, the centerpieces of the development are supposedly the two hotels and the condominiums in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, which most people here don't really need and probably can't afford - unless the goal of the developing company is to try and recreate the Granger experience closer to campus.
But questionable residential choices aside, it seems that the real potential for creating that college town feel is in its retail sector. And the cornerstone of any college town is its bookstore. Of course, Notre Dame already has the Hammes Notre Dame Bookstore, and by all accounts it's doing quite well for itself. After all, it just put up that billboard right up the road from Barnes & Noble on Grape and it's expanding its southern wing so that it will soon have over 2,500 more square feet, which will be used to create dedicated space for, among other things, Steiner Sports Marketing & Memorabilia Inc., Adidas apparel, a gelato machine and pretzel bar for the café.
Now, this might be an outdated concept, but I was under the impression that bookstores were supposed to mostly sell books rather than merchandise. Right now, it seems like the area of Hammes dedicated to books is roughly equal to that dedicated to apparel, merchandise, and other non-bookish things. Granted, the expansion will free up another 1,000 square feet in the textbook area (which is only fully stocked for a few weeks every term), but once it's complete, it will be hard to make the case that Hammes isn't a giant gift store with a book section attached. After all, the bookstore has demonstrated that their primary goal is making a killing off of merchandise and overpriced coursepacks (just to take an example from personal experience, charging $35 for a 100-page packet of bibliographical information that was not under copyright). And now Hammes (whose parent company is Follett, an international corporation with annual revenues of $2.3 billion) has also expressed interested in opening up a bookstore in the Eddy Street development.
But questionable residential choices aside, it seems that the real potential for creating that college town feel is in its retail sector. And the cornerstone of any college town is its bookstore. Of course, Notre Dame already has the Hammes Notre Dame Bookstore, and by all accounts it's doing quite well for itself. After all, it just put up that billboard right up the road from Barnes & Noble on Grape and it's expanding its southern wing so that it will soon have over 2,500 more square feet, which will be used to create dedicated space for, among other things, Steiner Sports Marketing & Memorabilia Inc., Adidas apparel, a gelato machine and pretzel bar for the café.
Now, this might be an outdated concept, but I was under the impression that bookstores were supposed to mostly sell books rather than merchandise. Right now, it seems like the area of Hammes dedicated to books is roughly equal to that dedicated to apparel, merchandise, and other non-bookish things. Granted, the expansion will free up another 1,000 square feet in the textbook area (which is only fully stocked for a few weeks every term), but once it's complete, it will be hard to make the case that Hammes isn't a giant gift store with a book section attached. After all, the bookstore has demonstrated that their primary goal is making a killing off of merchandise and overpriced coursepacks (just to take an example from personal experience, charging $35 for a 100-page packet of bibliographical information that was not under copyright). And now Hammes (whose parent company is Follett, an international corporation with annual revenues of $2.3 billion) has also expressed interested in opening up a bookstore in the Eddy Street development.