Left Bank Books Flows Over into New Space

Left Bank Books, an independent, full-service bookstore in the St. Louis, Missouri, metropolitan area, is expanding. Its turn-of-the-century neighborhood in the historic Central West End of the city is the lively home to a mix of fine restaurants, galleries, and cafés.

One such café, right next door to Left Bank's corner location, closed last June, and the space has remained empty. Kris Kleindienst, store co-owner, told BTW that the vacancy alone was not enough temptation for Left Bank to expand into the space. It was not until the neighborhood's only newsstand closed in March that the owners took advantage of the opportunity.

"We are adding 1,000 square feet to our 3,000-square-foot store," said Kleindienst. "The space next door has housed several different cafés over the past ten years -- it adjoins the bookstore with an internal door. That's been nice for us, but we proceeded with caution. Then the newsstand closed and all the stars were in alignment convincing us that we should go ahead with [the expansion]." She told BTW that the staff knew that the neighborhood needed a local outlet for magazines and newspapers.

Kleindienst continued, "We engaged the same architect we used when we renovated the store previously. It will be beautiful with a much larger array of periodicals tailored to our kind of store. We're also expanding our remainders and improving and tweaking displays in all sections. Now we're at the architect's drawing stage and are planning for a September opening of the new space."

An interior view of Left Bank Books.

Left Bank Books, founded in 1969, has always had a progressive political and cultural focus. It lists its specialties as modern literature and poetry; the contemporary art and performing arts scene; political analysis; African-American; feminist, gay and lesbian literature; psychology; and high quality, multicultural children's books.

Kleindienst is a writer and activist -- she is a member of the Paris Review Booksellers Advisory Board and won a Lambda Literary Award for her edited collection of essays, This Is What Lesbian Looks Like: Dyke Activists Take On the 21st Century (Firebrand Books). Barry Leibman, also a co-owner, is an abstract conceptual artist who has exhibited in numerous solo shows.

Left Bank features its own art gallery with nine to 12 shows annually by local artists. It has an extensive used book department and offers discounts for educators, institutions, and book groups. For the past 20 years it has offered a 10 percent discount on all hardbacks in the store.

The store participates in many community activities -- holding in-house fundraisers and sponsoring the holiday "Book Angel Project," which distributes books, paid for by customers, to children in need. Currently, the store is involved in the "Clark Elementary School Reading Project" -- which provides books, purchased by customers, to 35 students who each receive a book a month until the end of the year.

Kleindienst told BTW that she and Leibman were originally hired by the store's founders. "We assumed ownership in 1977, which meant assuming the store's liabilities. We knew nothing about the book business -- Left Bank was this community institution that no one wanted to lose -- so we said, 'sure -- we'll run it.' We backed into it."

ABA has been a help to the booksellers in many ways over the years. The store has been a member of the Book Sense program since its inception. Kleindienst said, "Our customer base looks forward to the 'Picks Lists.' The gift cards have been really good for us. The piece I appreciate most is the e-commerce branch [BookSense.com]. We use it a lot for a variety of things. It's a very important reference tool for us -- people see it and trust that this store can meet their needs." -- Nomi Schwartz