Nancy Bass Wyden in front of the store in March.
A day after a 50-year-old bookstore closed, a new store announced its opening date in another location.
The Strand will open its Upper West Side store at 450 Columbus Ave. between 81st and 82nd on Wednesday July 15, the company said on Thursday. The store had been poised to open in March prior to the pandemic.
Because of the pandemic, The Strand won’t be holding live events for the time being like it had expected to do.
“After 93 years of bringing good reads to NYC, I am so excited we can bring that joy to the Upper West Side! We will launch The Strand at Columbus Ave. on Wednesday July 15th,” said owner Nancy Bass Wyden. “We will be open Tuesday to Sunday 11 am to 6 pm. As The Strand’s third generation owner, I can’t wait to see all of you!”
The Strand will have in-store shopping but no curbside pickup for now.
The store sent some info about the opening:
- Official Name: The Strand at Columbus Ave.
- Opening Date: July 15th, 2020
- Operational Hours: Tuesday to Sunday 11 AM to 6 PM (closed Mondays)
- Curbside Pick-Up: The Strand at Columbus Ave. will not offer holds or curbside pick-up for now. The store is small, so we’ll be able to find the book you’re looking for quickly! We do have curbside pickup offered at our main store on Broadway at 12th.
- Buying Books: Unfortunately we’ve had to pause our book buying operations across the board. If you’re interested in selling your books to us follow us on social media or sign up for our newsletter to keep up with our announcements.
- Events: We will not be holding any in-person events at any of our locations for the foreseeable future. However you can go to strandbooks.com/events to explore all of our virtual events.
Nancy Bass Wyden gave a brief tour of the empty store in March.
Special sneak preview of @strandbookstore at Columbus Ave! The space was previously occupied by a wonderful bookstore, so we’re really looking forward to making this space our own. So much to do! 📖 #indiebookstore pic.twitter.com/wrbDO0EYDC
— Nancy Bass Wyden (@nancybasswyden) February 24, 2020
Does anybody know if they’re hiring? It’s easy to assume the people who were supposed to work there for the original opening date would plan to work there now, but unless they’re Upper West Siders, they may be uncomfortable having to take the subway now to get to work. The careers website on Strand’s website isn’t working.
Thanks!
I think people need to go beyond the normal rules of applying for work at this point. Have a resume online as well as a hard copy and make calls and send emails and just keep asking everyone if they need any kind of assistance. You might start out small and have it work out to be something bigger. Good luck!
The Strand is a union shop. The bulk of their employees were laid off in March due to Covid and roughly 1/5 of them were rehired when phase 2 began. The union contract indicates that The Strand must offer employment to previously laid off union employees before adding someone new, so no, they will not be hiring anytime soon.
So unfortunate not to be able to hire. What if a significantly better employee is available? Why should a store be shackled to its previous employees unless they were uniformly stellar? Which I doubt because no group of humans ever is uniformly stellar. What an anti-customer-service business-harming practice. Unions made sense when the boss was the monopoly caricature with all the power running a sweatshop. Makes no sense today esp on the UWS when the boss would be “cancelled“ via twitter And the strand would be genuflecting before you could blink. Power works the other way now.
GoStrand,
Maybe you could experience the staff when they start before whining about it.
Serioulsy, just stop whining.
Part 1
YIPPPPPIE
I can’t wait, I have been shopping at the strand so long its like a episode of Cheers when I walk in the 12th street store. I had hopes of the store in the Apple bank building a few years ago but that did not come off. Now they are going to be within walking distance.
Since they are most likely monitoring this story’s comments, here goes.
Part 2
Two suggestions for this store that mirror image the old store at 95 Fulton Street.
If you asked the Strand to search for book they would put it on hold for you when it came in. But they gave you the option of which store to pick it up in. Also the UWS is full of writers and people with large libraries. For those that may want to sell the Strand high quality, recent books we want to part with, ( oh the pain on just typing those words LOL) I suggest you do book buy back at the Columbus store. When the 95 Fulton street store was open they did this once or twice a month. I would bet you would get a lot of quality books in quickly as the store is nearby. Getting all the way downtown is tuff carrying a lot of books. There are a lot of writers, reviewers and academics up here.
Try the buy back once or twice a month you might like it.
Also do I get extra strand bonus points, as I was the last customer to shop at the 95 Fulton street store. At the end the did a big sale and it took a while to process.
My Lab puppy and I will have to camp out overnight to be the first one in the new store. LOL
would like to sign up for newsletter–I have many wonderful books to sell you when the time is right
Good luck on Columbus Ave
Welcome to our neighborhood ! We love books and we will all be visiting you soon !
OH MY GOD!!!! THIS IS GREAT NEWS!!!!
WONDERFUL!
Welcome to the UWS!
Shouldn’t it be “on” Columbus Avenue, not “at” Columbus Avenue?
Sorry, can’t help it, I’m a professional editor 🙂