After nine months of renovations, Beanbag Books in downtown Delaware plans to reopen next week with a newly expanded space for reading and events.
Owner Jody Everett said Tuesday that renovations to the store took place from February to October, and the store has expanded into the vacant side of the building and now spans the entire first floor at 25 W. Winter St. Everett said the space was available after Pure-n-Simple moved to a location on Central Avenue last year.
“We did a complete renovation of the entire building,” Everett said. “Everything was taken down to the studs of the building and rebuilt up from there. We took over the Pure-n-Simple side of the building so the lower level is all our bookstore.”
Everett said the larger space will allow the store to be more accessible to customers and will allow for more author visits and other reading events.
“The motivation was to have a larger space and also to eliminate the need for stairs for people to attend events and things like that,” Everett said. “The building was just very old and needed repaired. We’ll be able to have story times and larger events. We’ll be able to have author events in-house without needing to go elsewhere for that.”
Everett said Beanbag Books had a pop-up store from January to September, but she’s looking forward to welcoming the community back into her original location once again.
“(I’m excited about) seeing people again,” Everett said. “We’ve missed a lot of faces. I think people thought we completely shut down. It’d be nice to see the community again and host those events and have people gather in our space.”
Everett added that the store now has nooks for individuals to read in as well as its signature beanbags.
“(We wanted to create) a place for people to gather and share their love of books,” Everett said. “It’s exciting. There’s more spaces and areas for reading in the store, and we’ll start doing events again.”
Everett said the upstairs of the store is being converted to office space for rent at a future date.
