Bookselling News: Tattered Cover pulls off big move

From the American Booksellers Association's Bookselling This Week, Tattered Cover at Full Speed in New Location:

At 6:00 p.m. on Saturday, June 24, Denver's Tattered Cover closed its Cherry Creek store and by Monday at 9:00 a.m., the new Tattered Cover at the historic Lowenstein Theater was fully stocked and open for business. More than 100,000 titles had been moved by staff and 300 volunteers to the transformed multilevel theater that still boasts balconies and an orchestra pit. "We're all tired but thrilled," said Tattered Cover's Cathy Langer...

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Langer told BTW about the feat of moving a 30,000-square-foot store into 24,000 square feet over the course of not quite a day and a half. "Linda Millemann [Tattered Cover's general manager] had fine-tuned everything to military precision," she said. "She figured out how many seconds it took to pack a box, how many boxes we needed, how many volunteers. It was just brilliant. [Project manager] Regina Bullock also was a mastermind of the move." Of course, having 300 volunteers helped. "We're so grateful to the community for their support and for physically helping us," she said. Langer also noted the support of the bookselling and publishing industry.

The long vacant historic Lowenstein Theater, at East Colfax and Elizabeth Street, first opened in 1953. The bookstore has maintained its architectural and historic integrity, said Langer. "The space has a rather large footprint and a very high ceiling. We kept a lot of the theater's architectural elements partly because they're so cool and partly because the National Parks Service is overseeing it as a historic project."

The orchestra pit is one of the elements that the Parks Service required to stay. Bookshelves surround it, while the pit itself is used for Tattered Cover's theater section. Balconies, overlooking the main floor, serve as a place to read and to bring coffee from the bookstore's cafe. The lower level, formerly the cabaret, is now the children's, bargain, and travel sections...