Maple Street Book Shop to move and expand

  Photo by Michelle Stuckey

The historic Maple Street Book Shop in Uptown has plans to move and open a new store this month since the closing of the Maple Street Children's Book Shop next door.

The current store will move into the building that the children's book shop once occupied. In the adult store's place will be a used-and-rare book shop.

Gladin Scott, manager of the adult store, said that the move and the new store have been a long time coming.

"Our biggest challenge has always been lack of space. This gives us an opportunity to offer our customers more," Scott said. "We'll continue having new books and children's books, but we'll also have used books which is a big part of the independent book selling business."

The new store will not only offer used and rare books, but it will also offer a collection of local interest books by local authors and non-book items.

"We're also expanding our inventory of gift items, such as journals, planners and cards," Scott said.

Francesca Koerner, an employee at the adult store and a local artist, said that the staff is looking forward to the changes and that their customers have been very supportive.

"It's a really supportive community. When (the children's book shop) was closing, people were really upset. Now people are just curious," Koerner said. "It's going to be more books and a better layout. We're hoping we'll have more to offer than Borders or Barnes and Noble because they have a lot of books but they're very sterile."

The adult book store's move next door should be complete later this month, according to Scott. The new used-and-rare book store should be open later this fall.

You can follow the Maple Street Book Shop's progress and events on Twitter.