Don Blyly, owner of Uncle Hugo's Science Fiction Bookstore and Uncle Edgar's Mystery Bookstore, Minneapolis, Minn., which were burned in 2020 during the protests and vandalism after George Floyd's murder, has found a new site for the stores, as he outlined in the stores' newsletter. He is buying the building, with a tentative closing date of March 24, and hopes to open for business in June.
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| Future home of Uncle Hugo's and Uncle Edgar's. | |
The building is about two miles east of the old location and a short block and a half from Moon Palace Books. Blyly noted that "the Moon Palace people and I believe that having two bookstores with such different selections so close will do good things for both stores."
The building is currently occupied by a company that makes and repairs stained glass windows, among other glass-related work, whose owners have decided to retire. "The building has a large WPA painting of Minnehaha Falls painted directly onto an interior plaster wall, a large walk-in safe which is probably helping to hold up the roof, and massive support beams in the basement to hold up the first floor, so that you could probably park a fully loaded semi-trailer on the first floor without danger of collapse--which is just as well, given how heavy books are," Blyly continued. "There is no off-street parking, but a lot of on-street parking, most of it without parking meters."
Before the Uncles stores can open for business, electrical, plumbing, insulation and security work must be done. Blyly also needs to buy and build "a lot of book shelves," and the used books from his house and storage area have to be moved and shelved. The stores require a new computer system, and the data from the current system, which includes more than 21,000 titles the stores stocked for more than two decades before the fire, has to be transferred and updated. He also has to order upcoming titles as well as titles that have been released since the fire.
Blyly sold the stores' destroyed old site and has some insurance money. In addition, the stores' GoFundMe campaign has raised more than $191,000.