Tattered Cover at Full Speed in New Location

At 6:00 p.m. on Saturday, June 24, Denver's Tattered Cover closed its Cherry Creek store and by Monday at 9:00 a.m., the new Tattered Cover at the historic Lowenstein Theater was fully stocked and open for business. More than 100,000 titles had been moved by staff and 300 volunteers to the transformed multilevel theater that still boasts balconies and an orchestra pit. "We're all tired but thrilled," said Tattered Cover's Cathy Langer. "You walk into the store and it looks gorgeous. It looks beautiful." The new store is the third for Tattered Cover, which also has stores in Highlands Ranch Town Center and in Lower Downtown Denver (LoDo).

On Monday, approximately 100 customers attended the ribbon cutting and waited for the new Tattered Cover to open its doors. "Everyone said it feels like a Tattered Cover," said Langer. "We have a lot of people in the neighborhood just thrilled to have us here. We generated huge community support. And we also have the city behind us. Two city councilwomen were at the ribbon cutting."

Langer told BTW about the feat of moving a 30,000-square-foot store into 24,000 square feet over the course of not quite a day and a half. "Linda Millemann [Tattered Cover's general manager] had fine-tuned everything to military precision," she said. "She figured out how many seconds it took to pack a box, how many boxes we needed, how many volunteers. It was just brilliant. [Project manager] Regina Bullock also was a mastermind of the move." Of course, having 300 volunteers helped. "We're so grateful to the community for their support and for physically helping us," she said. Langer also noted the support of the bookselling and publishing industry.

The long vacant historic Lowenstein Theater, at East Colfax and Elizabeth Street, first opened in 1953. The bookstore has maintained its architectural and historic integrity, said Langer. "The space has a rather large footprint and a very high ceiling. We kept a lot of the theater's architectural elements partly because they're so cool and partly because the National Parks Service is overseeing it as a historic project."

The orchestra pit is one of the elements that the Parks Service required to stay. Bookshelves surround it, while the pit itself is used for Tattered Cover's theater section. Balconies, overlooking the main floor, serve as a place to read and to bring coffee from the bookstore's cafe. The lower level, formerly the cabaret, is now the children's, bargain, and travel sections. Although the new space is smaller, Langer noted, "Every book that was in Cherry Creek fit and is now comfortably housed."

Tattered Cover doesn't expect to change its offerings except to "beef up the theater section," but staff will note different demands on inventory and "tweak buying needs to fit needs of customers." The busy events schedule will continue in a "beautiful space," said Langer.

On Tuesday, the day after its opening, Tattered Cover was running at full tilt. "We're humming," Langer said. "It's been wild. It feels like Christmas." --Karen Schechner