Third Place a First Stop for Book Lovers

In The Great Good Place (Marlowe & Co.), sociologist Ray Oldenburg writes that a community's social vitality hinges upon having a gathering place where people can meet and exchange ideas -- a place that satisfies America's quest for community. He refers to this as the "third place." It seems only fitting then, that, in Lake Forest Park store, Washington, just north of Seattle, Third Place refers to an independent bookstore -- a popular gathering place that recently opened a second, much smaller (and much different) bookstore.

The original Third Place Books, which opened only four years ago, is a 44,000-square-foot space. Aside from selling books, the store houses five restaurants encircling a common area (mall-style), a demonstration kitchen, a stage, and a satellite campus for Shoreline Community College. "The concept behind the store is to be the 'third place,' the place to meet people," said Robert Sindelar, Third Place Books' general manager, referring to Oldenburg's book. "The first place is home, the second place is work, and third place is where people go to be around other people and exchange ideas."

The new store, Ravenna Third Place Books & Honey Bear Café, located in Seattle, officially opened November 20, 2002, and, like the Lake Forest Park store, is meant to be a neighborhood gathering place. Other than that, however, much about the new store is different from the first, Sindelar noted. "We wanted to try a variation on [our original bookstore]," he said of the new store.

The Ravenna bookstore location was purchased from a popular grocery store. Here, workmen are laying the floor prior to the bookstore's opening in November.

Sindelar noted that the Ravenna bookstore location was purchased from a consumer co-op grocery store, which had been part of a successful chain. "This small location was struggling, so they sold it," he said. "We thought the customer base was similar to what we were looking for. As a co-op, they had to vote on whom they sold it to." Considering that the co-op and its board were residents of the community, that Third Place Books was chosen to replace the popular grocery store bodes well for the new bookstore. As such, Ravenna Third Place Books was readily accepted into the community, Sindelar explained.

Workmen put finishing touches on the store.

The new store is "only" 6,000-square-feet and houses just one restaurant, the Honey Bear, Sindelar told BTW. Moreover, the Ravenna bookstore inventory consists of 75 percent used books, with the rest of the stock made up of remainders and new books.

Sindelar said that they decided to sell mainly used books because the "profit margin is higher on used," he explained. "We are a new store and it's hard to do well in a city unless you're a specialty store, and it's hard to be a small store with all the superstores close by. If you just did new books, you wouldn't have the wealth of titles that people have come to expect. With used, people are getting significant value."

The interior of the Ravenna store.

Sindelar said the Ravenna store stocks about 2,000 new titles, some of which are displayed along five tables at the front of the store. He added that they make sure that customers know that the staff, most of whom live in the community, have handpicked the titles. "We use cards to explain why they've been selected," he explained. "We have an eclectic mix and want to show that the new book profile" will mirror the personality of the community.

Thus far, business has been about what had been projected, Sindelar reported. "The holiday season was good, but it was kind of hard to gauge," he said. "When people take an hour out to go shopping, we just weren't on their radar yet."

While Sindelar said that the original Third Place Books is very active with both the Book Sense and BookSense.com programs, he noted that Third Place was still deciding how best to integrate the program into the smaller retail format. Third Place Books had been a BookSense.com pilot store, Sindelar noted, so he understands the value of having a BookSense.com Web site. With the original bookstore, "we hadn't really invested into doing an extensive Web site of our own, because we really wanted to focus on getting people into our actual store," he said. "BookSense.com became an easy way to up the ante of our Web presence fairly inexpensively." He noted that the Ravenna Web site is linked to the Third Place Books BookSense.com site.

As for how the Ravenna store would incorporate the Book Sense Bestseller and 76 lists, Sindelar said, "We're integrating the new store bestseller data with our original store data for Book Sense bestseller reporting," Sindelar said. "But we're still kind of massaging how we will be carrying and displaying new books." --David Grogan