White Whale Bookstore, Pittsburgh, Pa., is expanding into a second storefront in its building on Liberty Avenue in the Bloomfield area and hopes to open the new space this fall, the Tribune-Review reported.
Jill Yeomans, who owns the store with her husband, Adlai, said, "We had been thinking about expanding for a couple years." The two bought the East End Book Exchange in 2016 and relaunched it as White Whale Bookstore later that year.
White Whale had been talking with the developer of The Terminal in the Strip District, a mixed retail development that opened earlier this year, and thought it had a deal to open a branch there: the Yeomanses said McCaffery Interests had signed a letter of intent with them. But the developer announced a month ago that Posman Books, which has stores in New York City, Atlanta, Ga., and Boston, Mass., would open a store there instead.
"Our landlord, who didn't even at that point know about the Strip Terminal, reached out to us less than 24 hours after we found out we weren't going to be moving into that space in the Strip," Jill Yeomans told the Tribune-Review. The landlord had planned to expand his business into the storefront, but wound up scaling it back because of the pandemic.
The new space will connect with the current store through a hallway in the middle of the shop. Among other changes, White Whale is adding custom shelving and seating, which it didn't have before. It will expand its book offerings, sell more cards and merchandise, and be "a full-offering bookstore."
The Yeomanses also plan to expand staff, adding an events coordinator and one or two booksellers.