February 16, 2025

MCC-property

Epicurean real estate

Books Are Magic Set to Open Second Location on Brooklyn Heights’ Montague Street This Fall

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Books Are Magic, the beloved indie bookstore nestled on the corner of Smith and Butler streets in Cobble Hill, is opening a 2nd locale in Brooklyn Heights this drop, its entrepreneurs declared on Tuesday.

“The key is OUT! We’ve been dying to notify you about our 2nd place, and we just could not keep it in anymore,” the shop’s entrepreneurs, Emma Straub and Michael Fusco-Straub, wrote in an Instagram article. “Books Are Magic is coming to Montague Avenue, explain to anyone.”

The cozy store, with its legendary black-and-pink mural wall dealing with Butler Road, opened in 2017 following two nearby indie booksellers — BookCourt and Group Bookstore — shut forever. About the previous 6 a long time, the organization has come to be a fixture in the community, internet hosting activities for the borough’s smallest bookworms and signings for authors from in close proximity to and significantly and standing business in an era where by unbiased bookstores are struggling to prosper.

Books Are Magic Set to Open Second Location on Brooklyn Heights’ Montague Street This Fall

The owners and personnel of Books Are Magic inside the long run site of the bookstore’s 2nd area at the corner of Montague and Henry streets in Brooklyn Heights. Picture by Julia DeVarti

Builders in Brooklyn, Manhattan and even Los Angeles attained out to Publications Are Magic to see if they were interested in increasing nearly instantly immediately after the retailer opened, stated Nick Buzanski, the shop’s general supervisor and bookseller. But the owners were laser-targeted on the retail outlet they now had, and weren’t interested in branching out.

“We had a couple of folks method us, which include the Brooklyn Heights Affiliation, that they experienced finished a survey and that the main point people today said they wished as they’re seeking to rebuild Montague Road was a bookstore,” Buzanski reported.

Straub and her household expend a ton of time in that neighborhood and Textbooks Are Magic retains situations at St. Ann’s Church & The Holy Trinity Church on Montague Road relatively often, Buzanski explained, so Brooklyn Heights felt like a natural extension of the store’s territory.

“It built perception that if any individual was going to open up up a bookstore it was likely to be us, but we were seriously on the lookout for a area that felt like ‘us,’” he reported. “So, in excess of the final yr, yr and a 50 %, we looked at some places but the rents were extremely higher, there is a ton of stuff the place you’d have to go upstairs or downstairs, which was not very purposeful for us. It was not until we seemed at this locale that we walked in and and were type of like …. ‘Well, this is type of great.’”

exterior of closed book store during pandemic

The Cobble Hill location at 225 Smith Road in Could of 2020. Image by Susan De Vries

Construction is ongoing, but the store is slated to open up about Halloween, Buzanski said, if all goes very well. The somewhat smaller a single-floor house was just what the group needed for Publications Are Magic’s next locale.

“We by no means desired to open up, like, a substantial bookstore,” Buzanski said. “We want to maintain it little but mighty, so we can seriously make certain that every thing is curated the way we want, we’re really intentional in what we do and how we do it.”

Straub, Buzanski, and a couple of other supervisors function jointly with booksellers to cautiously select the textbooks available in the Smith Street shop, even though everything can be distinctive purchased if a customer is looking for a certain guide.

“We genuinely consider as a staff, and we definitely do get a whole lot of input from our booksellers and what they’re passionate about, and that enthusiasm, I assume, arrives as a result of the choice of what we’re psyched to promote, and I believe that definitely is what then introduces consumers to seriously entertaining and thrilling guides.”

Of system, the new locale, sandwiched concerning Cadman Plaza Park and the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, will host some of Guides Are Magic’s well known situations — but probably not until finally the spring, to give the staff members a probability to settle into new rhythms at the store, Buzanski claimed. And, for all the e book lovers eager to function in 1 of the borough’s very best-acknowledged bookstores, the staff will be growing bit by bit as October techniques. New positions will be posted on the store’s “About” page, and Buzanski stated each new posting tends to bring in hundreds of candidates from “all above the earth.” Personnel will likely perform in both equally places to get started, he reported, to make it experience like just one major staff.

exterior

Image by Susan De Vries

“Mike and Emma did not definitely always want to open a further spot, due to the fact this retail store is so critical and very good to them,” Buzanksi claimed. “But they genuinely sense like that community is portion of our community, so we really preferred to deliver Books Are Magic to Brooklyn Heights, specifically, mainly because it feels like us.”

Straub, Fusco-Straub and the Textbooks Are Magic team reiterated that they never intend to maintain on expanding in a push launch on Wednesday.

“Expect: our similar fantastic, friendly workers, our handpicked e book collection, our at any time-rotating merch collection, and some new surprises of its very personal,” the group reported in a assertion. “And of course — in advance of you even check with — this is it. The family members is entire. No far more! Just these two.”

Editor’s observe: A variation of this tale originally ran in Brooklyn Paper. Simply click in this article to see the primary story.

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