Apostrophe Books, Long Beach, Calif., is currently in the process of moving, with plans to re-open in early March at 5229 E. 2nd Street, six blocks east of its former location.
Owners Valerie Kingsland and Lisa Somerville, who launched Apostrophe more than two decades ago and have had their store in the Belmont Shore neighborhood since 2010, told the Grunion Gazette that book sales had slowed dramatically after a nearby Starbucks shuttered last May and "the closure had an inadvertent and adverse impact."
"Starbucks was this revolving door," Somerville said. "We are just not feeling the cross over traffic that we felt with Starbucks. There was a line in there every day, all day, and we benefited from that and so did everyone else on the block.... We've been in business long enough that we just know; things aren't picking back up."
The move is "an effort to capitalize on a more central location. "Who doesn't want to be in the epicenter of Belmont Shore?" she said. "With Open Sesame to the right, and Starbucks to the left, it's exactly where you want to be."
Somerville also noted that community support is making the transition easier: "So many nice things have been said to us in the last month since we said we were going to move. People are so glad that we are still going to be in the Shore. It's been overwhelming for us and our whole staff to feel all this support from the community."
