Barnes & Noble closure will leave Costa Mesa without a major bookstore
Barnes & Noble is closing its Costa Mesa store by the end of the year, the New York-based chain announced this week.
“The lease at our Costa Mesa location is expiring and the store will be closing at the end of 2016,” David Deason, Barnes & Noble’s vice president of development, said in a statement.
The two-story bookstore was one of Metro Pointe’s anchor tenants when the South Coast Drive shopping center — originally promoted as a lower-cost shopping alternative to South Coast Plaza across the street — first opened in 1996.
The Barnes & Noble, which also sells music and movies and has a Starbucks cafe, outlasted another Barnes & Noble that was at The Triangle. It also persisted after the closing of two Costa Mesa Borders stores at South Coast Plaza and in downtown, where a Mother’s Market and Kitchen is today.
In June, a locally owned bookstore in the Eastside, Books on Broadway, also closed. Though it started as a romance novel specialty store, it later expanded to all genres
Earlier this year, Barnes & Noble reported a 6.6% drop in sales and 6.1% decline in revenue for its fiscal year 2017 first quarter. It attributed the losses to a challenging retail environment as well as lackluster NOOK sales.
Metro Pointe’s Barnes & Noble is having a clearance sale in advance of the closing, with items marked down by as much as 30%.
Deason said the chain’s locations in Newport Beach and Huntington Beach will remain open.
Twitter: @BradleyZint
