Way back in February 2020, before the pandemic started, The Strand announced that they were planning to take over the former Book Culture location on the Upper West Side after it was seized by city marshals for unpaid rent totaling more than $100,000. The original plan was to open in the spring, but other circumstances—the aforementioned global pandemic being the main one—got in the way. But this week, the store has confirmed that they are planning to open up the location at 450 Columbus Avenue later in July.
"We're so excited to finally open the doors to The Strand at Columbus Ave. this month," Strand owner Nancy Bass Wyden told Gothamist. "Thinking about opening those doors feels like the light at the end of a long tunnel. This isn't quite the grand opening we had imagined, but we're looking forward to bringing some joy (and some great books) to the Upper West Side."
Back in March, 188 employees—the majority of the staff—were temporarily laid off from The Strand because the store had shutdown due to coronavirus, with only 24 full-time employees remaining. (Other independent book sellers around the city, including McNally Jackson and Book Culture, also temporarily laid off employees around the same time.) At the start of June, The Strand began offering curbside pickups for online orders, and reopened their indoor space by the end of the month. They also announced a new Strand stand at Terminal B in LaGuardia Airport.
The Strand has rehired 33 of those employees so far, bringing the total staff number up to 57, and a spokesperson notes, "based on current sales this is all we can sustain for the time being. We're taking it one day at a time. We're going to keep staffing at the UWS relatively small, so no plans to hire anyone new for now."
Book Culture had opened their store at 450 Columbus Avenue in 2014, but since at least summer 2019, it had been dealing with financial troubles due to alleged mismanagement from co-owner Chris Doeblin (who still runs three other Book Culture locations: two in the Morningside Heights area, and one in Long Island City). That led to a schism between Doeblin and minority owner John MacArthur, the vice president of Harper’s Magazine, who later sued Doeblin. At the time, it also emerged that landlord Tim Quinlan had lost faith in Doeblin, who Quinlan claimed had issues paying rent since 2016. (The store’s monthly rent was just shy of $38,000 at the end.)
