[URBAN NOTE] "Downtown Indigo closing"

[rfmcdonald]

Peter Hendra at the venerable Kingston Whig-Standard has more on the closure of the Indigo bookstore in the downtown of the eastern Ontario city of Kingston.

While it's nice that the suburban Chapters is still going to be open, I'm still taken aback at the occurrence. Kingston is the regional centre for eastern Ontario, the natural hub for the spaces between Toronto and Montréal and Ottawa and a noteworthy centre for educational institutions. I can only imagine what the numbers were like to make this perfectly serviceable centre no longer viable. I'm also concerned by the parenthetical mention of other stores, often of longer standing, closing down in the neighbourhood.

Indigo Books and Music first opened its current Princess Street location in late 1997. The new store, housed in the refurbished Abramsky building at 259 Princess, featured 20,000 square feet of space and 100,000 titles.

The next year, a large-format Chapters bookstore opened in the city’s west end.

When the two big-box booksellers opened their local stores, they were run by separate, and competing, companies.

However, those two chains — Indigo and Chapters — merged in 2001.

“Some markets, you put down a store and 15 years later the real estate isn’t the right real estate,” explained Drew McGowen, vice-president, real estate, for Indigo.

“It’s 15-years old and, as well, you find yourself in a market with two large-format bookstores in a small market.”