VERO BEACH — There’ll be no wondering how to fill the days this summer at the Vero Beach Book Center, as the Leonard family, owners of the store for 38 years, move the main store’s stock into the soon-to-be renovated children’s store.
The consolidation will shrink the business’s total size from 20,000 square feet to 12,500. But that suits Chad Leonard fine.
“It’s always been too big, especially for a small town,” says Leonard, the 38-year-old son of founders Tom and Linda Leonard. “Twelve thousand five hundred is still a very big book store,” he adds.
He says competition from internet sales and e-books haven’t helped the store’s volume, though there is clearly still a market for physical books, more than was anticipated five years ago. Nevertheless, efficiency has proven the key to success for small book stores.
Instead, the approach is to reduce costs and focus on books and events.
“We’ve got to change with the times,” he says. “Big book stores aren’t going to exist as much anymore. The small mammals survive while the big dinosaurs die off.”
Leonard says the move is expected to be completed in early summer and anticipates only having to close for a “couple of days, hopefully.”
An architect must first design some office space within the children’s store, which currently houses children’s books and toys downstairs, and young adult and discounted books upstairs.
Once the designs are drawn and permits pulled, construction should be quick, Leonard says.
The family and staff consulted with experts and debated amongst themselves whether to keep the main book store, with its high-visibility frontage on Indian River Boulevard, or move to the children’s center around the corner on Miracle Mile. The children’s center is set some distance back from the road, though it features a prominent marquis out front.
“The children’s store is where we want to be,” says Leonard, whose family owns both properties, catty-cornered across a parking lot behind the Modern One complex of shops.
Soon to be available for lease, the main book store is a pink mock-Victorian building, bought in 1991 and renovated in 1997 when the Leonards moved their business around the corner from the Miracle Mile strip mall, the Book Center’s original location.
The children’s book center was bought in 1997 when the tenant, a theater, finally closed.
The book center, with a staff of approximately two dozen, consistently ranks among the top book stores in the state, drawing authors of prominence for signings before audiences of 100 or more. Now, Leonard says, the new arrangement will allow for even bigger events.
“We’re going to have a great store. We’re pretty psyched about it,” he says.
