Open for business!

Fort Worth, TX

1/18/2008

Events during the week of Jan. 29 through Feb. 1


By Rick Waters '95

Llisa Lewis can't find the words to describe the bookstore odyssey.

The TCU Barnes & Noble general manager has moved the bookstore five times in two years. From 13,000 square feet in a converted grocery store to a 4,000-square-foot trailer to less than half a trailer, and finally to the 34,000-square-foot, two-story behemoth sitting on the corner of Berry Street and University Drive.

"It's a terrible comparison, I know, but I feel a little like Moses," she admits. "I think we finally feel like we reached the promised land."

Indeed, the new store feels homey, by mansion standards. It boasts 77,000 general reading titles, a Starbucks café, outside patio, reading/media room and more.

"I like the visibility on the corner. It's bigger than life. You could spend hours here," Lewis beams while catching her breath between last-minute preparations. "It has the Barnes & Noble relaxed, in-the-neighborhood feel combined with the best university in the world. What's not to like?"

It's a stark contrast to the portable buildings the store used since February 2006 when it vacated the store, which was a converted Tom Thumb grocery. Glitches were the norm. Pallets of books would literally fall through the floor. Doors fell off hinges. Selves bent under the weight of textbooks. Even the front door would sometimes fail to lock from the trailers' uneven foundation.

"We really learned about the fiber of the people working with us and for us – our staff, TCU people and Barnes & Noble," says Lewis who ran the TCU Bookstore in the Brown-Lupton Student Center for 20 years before becoming a Barnes & Noble employee in 1997. "The store itself is great. But it's great because the people who worked with us and for us built it. The fact that everyone endured and kept the faith despite setbacks is the compelling story."

TCU began a relationship with Barnes & Noble 10 years ago when it outsourced its bookstore operations and took over the old Tom Thumb grocery store. It was a successful partnership for both. The university got a larger, more visible bookstore that offered more. Barnes & Noble turned the location into one of its most profitable college store in the nation.

"B&N has found TCU to be an exceptional partner," Lewis says. "The university has been so supportive and helped us with anything we've needed. We're in awe because TCU has very much been on the mark. The elation is that it's all of our store. We're celebrating the partnership not just the bricks and mortar."

The relationship continues. When the bookstore couldn't expand any more in the old Tom Thumb, it moved its operations to portable buildings in February 2006 and made plans to renovate the space and add another story. Plans called for a new bookstore of about 23,000 square feet.

On March 13, 2006, the plan changed, as a fire consumed the empty structure after a welding torch was left on. Life in the trailers would go on.

Until this month.

"I'll take fate over planning any day," Lewis says laughing. "We would have had growing pains [in a refurbished store] had fire not happened. So chalk one up to serendipity."

The store's staff has tripled to 17 full-time staffers and 85 part-timers, including 65 percent who are TCU or Paschal High School students.

There is still some fine-tuning. On Friday, the store fixed its "send home" system and recalibrated the soda pump in the café.

More parking will come soon, Lewis says. The trailers will be broken down and moved in the next two weeks and the closed lot that held storage pods for merchandise will be opened by the time classes start on Jan. 22.

The first purchase was a cup of coffee.

"We just want something that alums and students will be proud of," Lewis says. "I like to think of it as a big house with lots of space for family."

The store is open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Sundays from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.

"We'll never have an off day again."