Somebody open a bookstore in Hopkins

There was a for new businesses to fill the vacant spaces in town, so what I think this town needs is an independently run bookstore on Mainstreet.  It would be an asset to the community, something that will draw more retail customers to the area and, from my own selfish perspective, it would give me a place to shop and hang out.

Just what does it mean to have an independently owned bookstore with all the amenities in a community anyway?  I would suppose that I should define exactly what I’m expecting to see in this bookstore.  Of course they would sell books, a place on Mainstreet where we could pop in for a paperback or to pick up the latest bestseller.  But just as important is the newsstand section of a bookstore.  Besides being a place to purchase books, such stores are purveyors of periodicals, a place for the locals to pick up magazines and newspapers. Sure, the internet is a great place to pick up news (and here's a plug for the great job done here at Hopkins Patch), but there's so much information out there that's still only available by picking up the print copy (and paying for your news ultimately keeps good journalism going). And a coffee bar is pretty much a mainstay for bookstores nowadays.  Customers tend to browse longer, linger a bit when they have a chat with the barista first.  I go into the Barnes & Noble at West Calhoun and feel lost without an opportunity to pick up that warm paper cup before perusing the stacks for something to blow my cash on.

Just take a look and you'll see several existing businesses and amenities to complement a bookstore on Mainstreet.  And this is a time when the City of Hopkins is trying to maintain the viability of the downtown area since the rerouting of County Road 3 to bypass it some years ago.  This may be a boon to the opening of a bookstore anyway, since the majority of the auto service and fast food businesses have been drawn south to Excelsior Boulevard, leaving behind a more sedate, walkable business area.

A brief list of what is nearby, if you will:

• Hopkins Public Library.  Located a block off of Main, this is the local branch of the Hennepin County Library system.  And from my own observations, it’s well used.  I have yet to enter the building and not see a large number of patrons.  So, just from casual observation I can tell that Hopkins is a literate city, and a literate city needs a place to purchase books.
• Hopkins Center for the Arts and Hopkins Cinema 6.  I will lump the two theaters together, even though they are different types of theaters.  But they are destinations for entertainment, albeit one being more “high brow” than the other, but it seems to me that the type of people that decide to make a night of dinner and theater are the type of people who would, say, browse a bookstore if they have a bit of time on their date night.  Maybe that’s just the type of dates my wife and I have, but it makes sense.  Arts, cinema, and literature, three of the finest that human society has to offer and Hopkins is lacking one of them.
• A handful of fine dining establishments, along the lines of Aji, Samba, and Curry & Noodles. Restaurants like these attract people with disposable incomes and the time to sit down for a longer meal than just a quick bite at, say, some fast food place.  Bookstores attract the same people, those with disposable income and time to browse.
• Mill City Writers’ Workshop.  While this place no longer has a physical location, there was recently a workshop for amateur writers, providing classes on creating memoirs, novels, and the like in Hopkins.  It stands to reason that a workshop for writers would match well with a store for readers, and perhaps some deal could be worked out to sublet space to them.  And should one of the writers happen to publish a book, well, they already have some sort of relationship with a bookstore in which to hold readings and publicize.
• Excelsior Crossings.  Cargill has the largest corporate campus in Hopkins, and it's a multinational corporation that usually requires a college degree for employment.  During a recent lunch downtown, I found that a good number of patrons that day had white collars and Cargill badges, and this was a good mile down Main Street from their office.  Being an international corporation, they’re frequently flying employees here to the headquarters in the Minneapolis area, and there’s talk of a hotel being built close by as well.  With Cargill in town, there’s a swarm of college-educated potential customers wandering about on their lunch breaks, especially with summer coming up.
• Southwest Light Rail Line.  This isn’t going to be open until around 2015, but don’t let that stop you from opening the bookstore now. The light rail will bring even more potential customers to the area in the form of commuters that could have some need to stop at a bookstore or newsstand on their travels and residents that will be flocking to Hopkins to live along the light rail line.  It’s called transit-oriented development, which basically means an increase in density in the areas around stations since light rail transit is so much more savory to people than your standard diesel-fume-spewing bus.

On top of all these complementary businesses and amenities, there really isn’t that much competition nearby:

• There are three chain stores at other shopping areas in the vicinity, all of them of them are Barnes & Nobles (West Calhoun, Ridgedale, and Eden Prairie Center).  The closest one is a safe six and a half miles away, and all of them are in areas that are shopping destinations unto themselves.  People go to shopping centers and hit up multiple stores because they’re there, and downtown Hopkins is just as much a center for shopping as any of the others nearby.  It just has the added bonus of being surrounded by the homes of potential customers instead of wide swaths of parking lot.
• As far as coffee goes, the Munkabeans Cafe is the only place on Mainstreet.  Sure, people could buy a coffee at Munkabeans or The Depot and walk it into the bookstore, but it seems that people tend to stay a while longer at bookstores if there's a cup of joe available in the store. Plus, the bookstore's bottom line would probably fare better with a "No Outside Food or Drink" sign on the door.
• The only sources of news in print in the near vicinity are the various Star Tribune and Pioneer Press vending machines dotting Main Street, the magazine racks at nearby gas stations, and the check-out lanes at Driskill’s. That's not a whole lot of selection. 

What else could be part of this daydream of a store?

• Look into setting up newsstands/kiosks at one of, or all of, the three Hopkins LRT stations when they’re up and running.  If it’s worth hiring the extra help during morning rush hours, you could cater to commuters looking for a newspaper or magazine for their ride in to work.  And on their way home, they’ll see the locked-up stands plastered with advertising for the downtown store itself, telling them to swing by on their drive away from the station.
• I would also use the store to encourage young writers from our local schools.  National Novel Writing Month runs the Young Writers Program, and in my teaching experience I’ve found some excellent young writers that just need an excuse to write.  As an extension to this program, the store could actually try and publish the work of a local school-aged author.  There are several relatively inexpensive publish-on-demand companies and it would be fairly simple to set up some local authors and the like to judge a contest for young writers where the prize if having their work printed and sold in the store.

I implore that someone please open this store.  There are a few promising storefronts available now (the former liquor store partially taken up by Sassy Pantz, the former Snyder's pharmacy, the new Marketplace & Main building currently going up, or maybe even Jack Yee's if it's big enough).  Furthermore, I may promptly apply for employment then turn around and spend my paychecks at the store.

A version of this blog entry was originally posted on Matthew Kilanowski's personal blog, King's Corner.