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The Barnes & Noble signs have been up at the former Party City location in Merchants Walk since late summer. The new store is slated to open on Nov. 19, according to Janine Flanigan, vice president of store planning and design.
Barnes & Noble’s previous Lakeland location, a stand-alone “superstore” with more than 20,000 square feet, near the Lakeland Square Mall closed in 2010 after 15 years in operation.
Recently, the bookseller has been expanding its physical footprint, with a planned 60 new locations opening across the United States this year.
The Lakeland store will feature Barnes & Noble’s new layout. The roughly 13,000-square-foot bookstore is “designed to take readers on a journey of discovery, flowing naturally from room to room,” Flanigan wrote in an email. The new design aims to feel warm and inviting with updated fixtures and furniture.
“Opening community bookstores is so important,” Flanigan wrote. “The more bookstores there are, the more people have access to books and reading. Bookstores are amazing places for gathering and sharing ideas.”
Barnes & Noble will become the second national book retailer in Lakeland, after Books-A-Million at Lakeside Village. Lakeland has also given rise to a growing number of independent, locally owned bookstores including: Pressed Books, Inklings Book Shoppe, BookaReaderville, Bookends Used Books, Unbound Bookery, the pop-up Crash Bookshop and the mobile Little Bus Books.
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I am so happy to see Barnes & Noble coming back.And I’m happy to see other bookstores resurrect in a time when everybody is attached to their electronics.People need to get back into reading open up their brains