Business & Tech

Wynnewood Borders to Close, Leaving Behind 40 Jobs, Vacant Anchor Store

Customers were saddened Monday evening to hear the news of the chain's liquidation.

They’ve been arriving fast and furious in the email inboxes of Borders Rewards card holders for most of 2011—daily coupons and two-for-one deals, sales on New York Times bestsellers, 50 percent off weekend specials, clearance blow-outs.

Since February, , many of the local regulars at the might have felt Monday’s liquidation news coming, but didn’t want to think about it much.

“Oh no,” said a woman browsing the new paperbacks, her voice a combination of sadness and anger. “Next there’ll be no bookstores,” said the woman, who did not wish to give her name. “I can walk here from my house,” she added, abruptly putting down a nonfiction trade bestseller, and briskly walking away.

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Borders Group Inc., the second-largest bookstore chain in the country after Barnes & Noble, said Monday it would liquidate its remaining 399 stores after it failed to receive any offers to save it, the Wall Street Journal reported. Nearly 11,000 jobs will be lost.

About 35 customers were in the spacious store at about 8 p.m. Monday, lingering in the air-conditioned stacks, reading in leather chairs, or having a coffee and a bite upstairs in the Seattle’s Best café. There, customers read newspapers and magazines, worked on laptops or chatted with a friend, as dusk settled over the Wynnewood Train Station, visible past the parking lot and across East Wynnewood Road.

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It is not yet known when the Wynnewood location will shut down for good, but liquidation could begin as early as Friday, the Journal quoted the company as saying. Most if not all stores will likely be closed by the end of September.

“By the end of the week we should have more information,” said Michael Lafferty, 38, the sales manager at the Wynnewood Borders, taking a moment from re-shelving books. “We’ve been letting people know tonight. We all knew this day was possible, but still, having it official is not the news that anyone wants to hear.”

He said the store employs roughly 40 people at any given time, mostly part-timers. Lafferty, however, is full-time, and has been with Borders since 2000, working first at the now-closed Chestnut Hill location, and moving to the Wynnewood store in 2006.

He’s not sure what his next move will be, but the resume has been updated, he said. “Now is the time to start knocking on doors.”

At 27,500 square feet over two floors, the store is one of four “anchors” in the Wynnewood Shopping Center, with a Bed, Bath & Beyond, a Genuardi’s supermarket, and an Old Navy. Situated in a different building from the majority of the other retailers and separated by a small roadway within the center, its closure will be all the more keenly felt. It comprises more than 10 percent of the center’s 255,000 square feet of leasable space.

The shopping center is owned by Federal Realty Investment Trust, a publicly traded real estate investment trust (NYSE: FRT). Federal Realty also owns the Bala Cynwyd Shopping Center on City Avenue and the Andorra Shopping Center in Roxborough.

The liquidation will also affect two other nearby stores that survived last winter's closings—in and Exton.

‘Never too crowded’

Two friends, doctors both, were disappointed to hear the news, even trying to deny it at first. “No—they said this one was going to stay open,” said one, referring to last winter’s closures and the sparing (temporarily, it turns out) of the Wynnewood location.

 “A lot of students come in here everyday and study,” said Orlee H., 27, an intern physician who moved to Wynnewood just a month ago (she and her friend asked to have only the initial of their last names used). “There aren’t too many places where you can sit and read most of the day, and have books available, and coffee.

“It’s nice. It was nice.”

“Borders was unable to overcome competition from larger rival Barnes & Noble and from Amazon.com, which began to dominate book retail when the industry shifted largely online,” Reuters reported later Monday night. “Borders, for which online sales represented only a small fraction of revenue, never caught up to its rivals’ e-reader sales, namely Amazon’s Kindle and Barnes & Noble’s Nook.”

Orlee and her colleague, also an intern, were spotted sitting on the floor in the store’s “medicine and health” section, picking out expensive study guides for their board examinations. Upon hearing that liquidation of the store could start as soon as Friday, they looked again at the price tags on the large books in their arms, and said perhaps they’d come back for them on the weekend.

“I’m going to miss the fact that this is not one of those super-busy Borders in the city,” said Lulu H., 26, who has lived in the area for four years, attending the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine on City Avenue. “There’s free parking, it’s never too crowded, and it’s never a process to go through [the] bookstore like it is with the Barnes & Noble down in the city.”

The irony of her remarks was not lost on the doctor, who said at her busiest over the past few years she was in the Wynnewood Borders at least once a week, sometimes more.

Orlee said the last book she purchased not related to medicine was “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” which she said she acquired some time ago, but probably purchased in Borders “because their coupons are better than Barnes & Noble.”


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