Leana’s Books & More Plans to Open New Location
NILES, Ohio – Leana’s Books & More will open a new location at Eastwood Mall by July 1, one of the bookstore’s owners confirmed Thursday.
The space, between Everything Buckeyes and Yankee Candle, in the corridor anchored by Boscov’s, is under construction, according to Joe Bell, spokesman for the Cafaro Co., which operates the mall.
“They hope to have it open by July 1,” he said.
Leana’s, which has stores in Hermitage and Grove City, Pa., and Austintown had been looking for a new location for the past couple of years to replace the store in Hermitage’s Shenango Valley Mall based on “the writing on the wall” for that property, said Vince Hillard, who co-owns the store with his wife, Leana.
The couple opened the Austintown store in 2021 “so that we would never be stuck where we would just have to close the doors and shut down, and we’d always have a place to go,” he said.
The locally owned bookstore chain offers bestsellers, new releases, popular titles and used books.
The Hermitage property, which was acquired by an affiliate of Pepper Pike-based Flicore LLC in 2022, has lost tenants in recent years with the departure of anchors Sears and Macy’s. Its previous and current owners were mired in a protracted legal dispute with its remaining anchor tenant, JCPenney, that only ended in January. Demolition of the mall complex is expected to begin this year as part of Hermitage’s proposed town center project.
“We were hoping we would find something in the Hermitage area, but we just could not find anything that was affordable and a good location,” Hillard said. “We have a good customer base there.”
Earlier this year the owners received a letter from the mall’s owners stating they did not know what was happening with the property. Three weeks later they got a subsequent letter stating the store needed to vacate the property by May 31. The Hillards had contemplated just closing the Hermitage store – their first, which they opened in 2012 – and moving everything to Austintown when they were approached just a few weeks ago by representatives of Eastwood Mall, which is owned and operated by the Cafaro Co., according to Hillard.
“It was really good timing, a good location, so we decided just to move everything there,” Hillard said.
Bell, who acknowledged he hadn’t known much about Leana’s until a few weeks ago, said the bookstore has “quite a following,” different from chain bookstores like Books-A-Million, another Eastwood tenant, and Barnes & Noble.
“It’s kind of a neat business,” Bell said. “It tends to have more of a local, used bookstore kind of appeal.”
The 5,600-square-foot space at Eastwood includes backroom space that Hillard doesn’t plan to use for sales, at least initially. The sales space in Hermitage was 3,500 square feet. Plans were to operate in Hermitage through close to the end of May, but the announcement by the city of Hermitage of a “last day at the mall” on May 4 might accelerate plans.
Hillard said they will try to keep it open after that “to see what business is there,” but he’s concerned the community will just believe that the mall is closed.
“What we’re going to do is play it day by day after May 4, and then try to get moved over [to Niles] and opened up as soon as possible,” he said.
Pictured at top: A Leana’s Books & More sign is seen at the bookstore’s Austintown location.
Copyright 2024 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
