The Booksellers on Fountain Square, a bookstore featuring both a crêperie and coffee bar, will open in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio, this July.
The shop will occupy a 6,500-square-foot space that previously housed a Brooks Brothers store. Neil Van Uum, owner of the Booksellers on Fountain Square and a downtown Cincinnati resident, plans to take a heavily curated approach to inventory selection.
Said Van Uum: "I've seen bookstores go through a lot of changes in my 25 years on the frontlines of the industry, and I'm excited to see a new era where quality outshines quantity and customers expect more than your basic retail experience.... Our mission will be to connect people with books in a personal fashion."
Van Uum is also owner of the Booksellers at Laurelwood, Memphis, Tenn., which was once a Davis-Kidd bookstore and for a time was part of Joseph-Beth Booksellers. Van Uum was the longtime co-owner of Joseph-Beth, which under different owners emerged from bankruptcy in 2011, with stores in suburban Cincinnati, Lexington, Ky., and the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. It later opened a store in Crestview Hills, Ky., near Cincinnati.