U-Store may discontinue book sales

The U-Store will stop selling books and the University will buy Micawber Books if discussions between Nassau Hall and the two retailers conclude as expected, individuals familiar with the situation said.

The two developments would make way for the opening of a Princeton franchise of Labyrinth Books, a private operator that already serves Yale and Columbia. The University would give Labyrinth its blessing to be the sole bookseller in Princeton, besides the recently opened Glen Echo Books on Nassau Street. Micawber's operations would be folded into the Labyrinth store.

The 101-year-old U-Store, a coop with some 60,000 members, has sold books to Princeton students since 1905. If the plans go through, the store would limit itself to selling retail merchandise, such as University-related apparel and dorm supplies.

The U-Store's potential move out of the book market is the result of pressure from University administrators, the individuals who spoke to The Daily Princetonian said. They were granted anonymity because plans have not been finalized, and they were not authorized to speak on the record.

Nassau Hall's motivations for pushing ahead with the changes remain unclear, as officials were unwilling to comment for this article because negotiations between the various parties are ongoing.

The individuals speaking to the 'Prince,' however, said that University officials are concerned that the U-Store, which some faculty have criticized for lacking scholarly luster, doesn't adequately fulfill the role of an academic bookstore.

A new Labyrinth store dedicated solely to books would be better placed to fill that niche role. The Harvard/MIT Coop, a veritable icon in Cambridge, Mass., is also cited as an example of what a Princeton store should be modeled after, serving the needs of the local academic communities and projecting an appropriate scholarly image.

Criticism

The decision to cut back on the U-Store's campus role was met with criticism from some quarters, which questioned the wisdom of bringing in a for-profit private company to take over the work of a nonprofit coop with a long history in the community.

"I was outraged at the way this went," music professor Rob Wegman, who recently completed his term as a trustee on the U-Store board, said in an interview.

"The store has existed for more than 100 years. With a little more than a few weeks' notice, the board members were forced to make a decision on the mission and purpose of the store — a decision to break with more than a century of tradition."

Wegman also questioned what the move means not just for the students and faculty at the University, but also for the community as a whole.

"The U-Store has been here for so long as a coop," he said. "It's owned by the people and it's a part of the community. Now we're talking about bringing in a commercial bookstore that's not from this area."

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"The U-Store may have its limitations, but it was doing a good job, much more than it got credit for. I have yet to see if Labyrinth Books will have the same commitment."

Labyrinth company officials declined to comment until an official announcement is made. Micawber co-owner Logan Fox said that while he thinks about the store's future, there are no definite plans in the making.

"We'll be here as long as I have the energy and love for it," Fox said. "I could still be here in 20 years, barking at the staff about 'remembering the old days.' "

When pressed to comment on the store's immediate future and potential plans to sell Micawber to the University, Fox, however, declined to comment.

Micawber, a local institution in its own right, has taken on an ever-increasing role in the lives of University students since it was opened in 1981. Fox said it now sells textbooks for about half the courses at the University, mostly in the humanities.

"We began selling textbooks at the request of a couple of professors who liked the store, wanted to help it succeed and who had problems with the U-Store," Fox said.

A new vision

The move away from the U-Store and to Labyrinth is largely the brainchild of Mark Burstein, the University's executive vice president for administration. A former senior executive at Columbia who came to Princeton in 2004, Burstein, and others in Nassau Hall, are said to see the planned changes as an opportunity to recast the bookselling and retail landscape in Princeton.

Plans for the change have been simmering quietly for months. Last spring, after learning that Fox was interested in selling Micawber, the U-Store board began discussing the possibility of purchasing Micawber and expanding the coop to include a presence on Nassau Street.

Officials from the U-Store then approached Nassau Hall but were surprised to learn from officials there that the University itself was interested in purchasing Micawber. Administrators also told the U-Store that it would have to cease its book-selling operations in preparation for the arrival of Labyrinth Books.

The individuals speaking to the 'Prince' said the U-Store was left with no decision but to comply with Nassau Hall's request. The University owns the space now occupied by the U-Store at 36 University Place and has the right to terminate the lease with one year's notice. If the University decided to take such an action, the U-Store would be forced to relocate off campus, a financially untenable situation.

Moreover, there was some thought that the U-Store, which already sees extremely low margins on its book sales, couldn't survive in competition with a University-backed bookstore operated by Labyrinth.

The University allegedly gave the U-Store three weeks to decide whether or not to discontinue book sales, at which point the school threatened to terminate the lease. U-Store officials agreed to the plan, though it remains unclear what effect the decision will have on the store's 75 full-time and part-time employees.

For months, U-Store officials and administrators have traded compromise plans proposing alternative business models for the store, including the possibility of an expanded store moving to the planned arts neighborhood and taking over the Student Computer Initiative, an arm of the Office of Information Technology that sells computer products to students.

Ultimately, however, those proposals were rejected in favor of the current plan.