Ouray Bookshop, located in the Beaumont Hotel in Ouray, Colo., will close at the end of the year unless a buyer can be found. In a message on the bookstore's website, owners Amy and Brian Exstrum explained that the new owners of the hotel are not extending their long-term lease past the first of the year. "They have said that we can go month-to-month, but we absolutely cannot function properly with that kind of lease. At this point, we have no place to move that would accommodate our needs."
The Exstrums had put the bookshop up for sale earlier this year with plans to retire, but the deal fell through when the lease situation developed. "That said, if a new prospective buyer would come forward and (hopefully) have a space in which to move, we would love to talk to them," they noted on the website, adding: "This shop has been a labor of love and we have built it to be a wonderful cornerstone business in Ouray."
The Beaumont Hotel sold for $6.3 million in July to new owners Eliot and Tara Vancil. "We have no plans for this space being anything other than a bookstore at this time," Eliot Vancil told the Ouray County Plaindealer, which noted that Amy Exstrum "said the only plans she's aware of for the space are ones she overheard when she was working in the shop on September 5, before opening for the day. Vancil and another man entered the breezeway above the shop, in between the patio and the hotel. They stood above the glass doors to the shop and she heard them discuss shrinking the size of the bookshop, pushing it forward into half the space, putting in chairs and tables and couches and serving coffee."
"They've never spoken to us about this," she added. "There was never a discussion about working something out or whether we could function in a smaller space. They just said we're not extending your long-term lease."