UM Bookstore plans for new location

The University of Montana Bookstore is planning to spend $3 million to build a 16,000-square-foot building on the southwest end of town. After buying out the local bookstore Fact & Fiction last November, a third bookstore is the final step in the current plans for expansion.

“We want to build a place where the community can experience and celebrate the arts and literature,” said Bryan Thornton, the bookstore’s general manager.

The UM Bookstore is independent of UM and receives no funding from students’ tuition or fees. It is a nonprofit organization owned and operated by a collective of UM faculty and staff.

In August 2005, the Bookstore spent $500,000 on an empty lot in the Albertson’s shopping center at the corner of 39th Street and Russell. Eamon Fahey, the UM Bookstore project director, presented the original plan at a UM Faculty Senate meeting in April 2006. At that time, he said he hoped to begin construction by early 2007.

A full year has past since the planned groundbreaking, but the soil on the north side of Albertson’s is still untouched. The Bookstore hasn’t even started looking for a builder, but has already spent $125,179 on planning, legal work, engineering, design and “a group trip to Seattle to look at retail for ideas.”

Thornton said the biggest delay has been “major circumstantial shifts” since the UM Bookstore bought the land.

“UM is moving toward the construction of a new College of Technology on South Campus. When we purchased the present land and began planning, there was no plan to build COT on South Campus,” he said.

“If there is to be a new COT, we must reconsider the store placement,” he said, which would mean selling the current lot and buying a new one closer to South Campus.

But this is only the latest knot in a string of delays that have kept the proposed bookstore from becoming a reality.

Fahey said one of the first hang-ups was a lack of purpose, as the board of trustees struggled to define the direction of a new Bookstore location. For years, the UM Bookstore emphasized athletics and the sale of Griz gear.

The goal of the new project is to re-establish the college Bookstore as a literary member of the community, Thornton said. In order to do that, there needed to be brand recognition in the community that would reel in quality local authors for readings and signings.

“We needed to build a brand, but how do you do that? Instead, we just bought the brand,” Thornton said, referring to the Bookstore’s November purchase of Fact & Fiction. He said that Barbara Theroux, the store’s former owner, has a two-year contract with the UM Bookstore to get the Fact & Fiction name up and running under the new owners and at multiple locations.

“We were going to put a bookstore out there, we just didn’t know what it was going to be like,” Thornton said. For that reason, “Fact & Fiction was a wonderful gift.”

The purpose and direction of the expansion is settled, but other problems are still holding up the Bookstore’s expansion.

Albertson’s added a mandate to the contract when the Bookstore bought the land that gave the grocery store the right to deny design plans deemed unacceptable. Thornton said that might be a problem because the proposed design “doesn’t really fit the big box store model.”

The building’s blueprints were drawn up by the Mosaic architecture firm, which designed the Student Recreation Center and the Lewis and Clark Village apartments.

“We’re going for unique here,” Fahey said. “We’re definitely pushing the envelope.”

Albertson’s assistant store director John Hazelbaker said it was too early to comment on his store’s deliberations over signing off on the project.

But concerns about the bookstore aren’t restricted to the off-campus community. University Center director Candy Holt is concerned that a large off-campus bookstore location might reduce foot traffic through the UC. 

“I just want to be sure the Bookstore continues to suit the needs of the campus community,” she said. 

Thornton said he doesn’t expect much of a drop in business at the campus bookstore because it mostly serves students who live on campus or shop while they’re here for school. He said very few people come to campus just to shop.

“The Bookstore already does $12 million a year in sales, and parking is very limited,” he said.

Rather than serving those who live on campus, the new location would mostly serve COT students and those who live off-campus.

“One thing that’s lacking on that end of town is a meeting space,” Thornton said, adding that he hoped to revive Missoula’s artistic and literary culture in the new store.

In addition to shelves upon shelves for books, the proposed design features a coffee bar, meeting rooms, classrooms for art classes and an outdoor patio.