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| Indigo Bridge's new home | |
Indigo Bridge Books and Café, Lincoln, Neb., closed its Historic Haymarket location temporarily last spring due to the Covid-19 pandemic, then later announced that a decision had been made permanently to shutter the Creamery Building store in August, after 12 years in business.
Now, however, Indigo Bridge is "in the process of renovating a former laundromat at 1346 B St.," the Journal Star reported, adding that the renovation should be finished in the coming months, but coronavirus restrictions will determine when the bookstore officially reopens.
"It could be in the spring," said general manager Kaya Smith. "We've tried to be intentional and deliberate about every decision we've made.... We want to serve the same group we set out to serve 12 years ago when we started this. Our goal has always been to serve this community."
Marketing director John Nguyen said, "Right when we closed, we knew we were going to reopen again."
In a June Facebook post about the decision to close, owner Kim Coleman and her staff had noted: "We'll be reevaluating how we fit into and serve the Lincoln community with a hopeful eye to future endeavors.... We love our community and our awesome staff and are hopeful we'll find a new and meaningful place in the community someday."
The relaunch is already underway with an online focus on marketing subscription boxes of books. Nguyen described this as a first step toward opening the new store, which will drop "Books and Cafe" from its original name and be known simply as Indigo Bridge. The Journal Star wrote that the new space "will still have a coffee counter, as well as places to read. It will also sell basic grocery items such as milk."
Nguyen told ABC8: "I guess with Covid it was a silver lining with all the other factors going on. It allowed us to take a pause and re-evaluate what we wanted to be and who we said we were going to be.... When we sat down as the team, just the five of us, we were figuring out what our mission was and a lot of it was serving those under-represented communities."