After decades of keeping its bookstore in the basement of Gilman Hall on the Homewood campus, the Johns Hopkins University plans to move the store to a larger off-campus location in Charles Village as early as next year, university officials said yesterday.
"The idea is to get it out into the community so it can fill our needs for campus textbooks and also the community's need for a quality bookstore," said Dennis O'Shea, a university spokesman.
In Gilman Hall's coffee shop, one of the university's 3,400 undergraduate students was not pleased with the news.
"If I need paper and pens before class, I don't want to walk 30 minutes off-campus," said Kevin Callahan, a 21-year-old mechanical engineering student.
O'Shea said construction of a bookstore on property owned by the university would enliven the neighborhood and "promote more of a college-town atmosphere." O'Shea would not say where the store would be. A request for proposals from booksellers will go out within a month, he said.
The university recently was criticized by some North Baltimore residents when plans to open a Bibelot bookstore in the newly renovated Homewood Apartments in the 3000 block of N. Charles St. were scrapped. Residents wanted the store, but Barnes & Noble, operators of the campus bookstore, objected to the deal. The bookstore's contract is up for renewal this year.
Hopkins officials insisted the latest decision -- which, they said, has been under discussion for some time -- was unrelated to that controversy.
"This has been on the books," said Steve Libowitz, the university's news and information director. "This was one of the big things we've been planning to do, since we have a stake in Charles Village."
A spokesman for Barnes & Noble College Bookstores Inc. in New York said the company -- which runs 300 campus bookstores -- intends to submit a bid for the new store.
"We have proudly served Johns Hopkins University since 1981 and have a fine working relationship," said Stan Frank of Barnes & Noble.
Other major book retailers would have to expand into textbooks to bid for the business, said O'Shea, adding: "Bibelot and Borders would have to decide if they want to get into this line of business."
Donald Manekin, of the local development company that had planned to lease space to Bibelot in the renovated Homewood building, said he didn't know the university had plans to move its bookstore off-campus.
Brian Weese, owner of the local Bibelot chain, said he would take a "hard look" at the details of the university's request for proposals.
Retired Baltimore Circuit Judge Elsbeth L. Bothe, a Homeland resident, said the neighborhood has long needed "a fair-sized place to buy books that has room to browse, with a little coffee shop."
Pub Date: 4/02/98
