I don’t put much stock in predictions of the future, whether it is the Oracle at Delphi, Professor Marvel’s crystal ball or the party favorite, the Magic 8 Ball. To me, they all have an equal chance of being correct, which is to say – who the hell knows…
The news is now out that Elliott Bay Books is moving, leaving Pioneer Square after 36 years. For those of you who don’t know what it is, Elliott Bay is a huge, general bookshop, about two and a half blocks due south of us. They have been known for their funky and comfortable setting – creaky, fir floors and rough wooden shelving – as well as their terrific selection of books, knowledgeable staff and a near constant parade of author signings. They have a café in the basement – in short, they’re the model on which the corporate behemoths based themselves.
Citing problems in the neighborhood, Elliott Bay has announced that they’re moving up to the Broadway area early next year. What will it mean for us? All we have are guesses and we have no inside knowledge of what the future holds:
Pioneer Square: Yes, there is crime and drug dealing and there are scary, smelly people in Pioneer Square, but these people exist in nearly every neighborhood in Seattle as well as other cities on the planet. If there is life on other planets, they probably have scary, smelly beings there too. So you either deal with it, ignore it, or avoid it. Too many people are avoiding it and spending their money at the corporate monsters, whether in person or on line. That’s a problem for all small businesses, not just bookshops, and not just in Pioneer Square.
The major problem in Pioneer Square is parking. It is true: parking down here is a pain in the butt. And, let’s be clear, it is only going to get worse. What the people in charge of Seattle have yet to deal with is that, whether or not the tunnel is built under the city or not, the Alaskan Way Viaduct is going to have to be torn down. While the demolition takes place, downtown will lose a ton of parking that now takes place under it. (If you don’t know what this is all about – the Viaduct is an elevated, two-decker highway – old 99 – that runs along the waterfront – two blocks West of us. It is ancient and earthquake damaged and has to come down by man or nature, and soon, and the city currently has hundreds of parking spaces underneath it, on ground level.) I have yet to hear anyone address how the city will replace this amount of parking during construction. I seriously doubt it will be replaced after demolition. What had been shaded, grubby room good for little else but parking spaces automatically become sun-lit prime real estate with a great view and prices will skyrocket out of the affordability or desirability of mere parking our cars. No one in this city is addressing that approaching headache.
All of that simply means that getting shoppers into downtown will become far more difficult and will funnel them out to the malls where the parking lots are huge and free. This will harm sales for us local, small businesses and fewer sales means less sales tax to the city and more sales to the malls that are outside of Seattle.
Customers: We take in a large number of used mystery books that have Elliott Bay stickers on their back covers. Those people live in walking distance of Elliott Bay Books and I assume that they’re buying mysteries there at night, when we’re not open. Those folks won’t have Elliott Bay to walk to anymore, day or night. We very well may pick up those sales on the weekends if those readers shift their buying patterns. That’s only a guess.
Then, too, there are those locals who make a special drive to Elliott Bay to buy a sack-full of books and then come here to buy their mysteries (most make a point of assuring us that they didn’t buy any there but are making sure we know that they’ve been supporting us both – and we thank them profusely). Will those people still make a point of going to the new locale and then coming down here? Don’t know about that. Maybe, maybe not. It has been very convenient for those people to drive downtown, park once, and hit two bookshops. It won’t be so convenient any more. Again, we can only speculate. Perhaps they’ll become mail orderers. After all, it is sometimes cheaper to call us and have us mail books, with the mailing costs being cheaper than gas and parking and time.
Over the 19-plus years we’ve been here, the folks at Elliott Bay have been very good about calling us to ask if we have this or that book for a customer, or to see if we can decipher the clues a given customer remembers about a book they read years ago and to see if we know the author or book. And we’ve sent a continual stream of people down to them when they’ve asked for books on tarot or mysticism or anything else that people mistakenly believe ‘mystery’ means. We’ll lose a few sales from them not being there to send foot traffic to us and they’ll lose sales by not being in walking distance from us. But I don’t really think that will amount to much for either shop.
We could conceivably pick up sales of special orders to the neighborhood residents who don’t drive and don’t want to bus to the new Elliott Bay location. If we can get them to understand that we will be happy to special order non-mysteries for them, we could pick up sales that way. Hard to know.
Author Events: I don’t expect Elliott Bay’s moving to harm us when it comes to author events. Sure, a publisher could get a room at the Alexis just two blocks north and the author could walk to signings with us or Elliott Bay. Their new space won’t be that far away, and it shouldn’t affect the allure of sending an author to Seattle and having them sign with us at noon and Elliot Bay that night. This just makes their travel budget more efficient and productive. So that shouldn’t be threatened.
Tourists: Pioneer Square is thick with tourists from March to September. It starts with Spring Break and doesn’t die off until the cruise ships stop sailing in the Fall. The tourists will still flock to the area and we always benefit from that, as I am sure, Elliott Bay did too. We may have benefited a bit more, as our specialty affords us a depth of selection that even Elliott Bay didn’t try to match. Why bother when we were just blocks away? They ceded it to us and put their stock into other subjects. Will we pick up more sales from tourists who went there first and only found us afterward, as they walked around the area? Perhaps. We can hope.
So, end the end, even if we rely on the sage directions of someone’s crystal ball, I don’t think Elliott Bay’s move will harm us much and, in the end, could benefit us somewhat. But, time will tell.
What does the Magic 8 Ball say on occasion?
“Answers Unclear. Ask Again Later.” - JB
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