At Borders, Customers Seek Deals and Lament Closing

Customers have been streaming into the store steadily, looking to find going-out-of-business sale deals for books, games, music and crafts.

And if you didn’t know any better, you’d think the store at is doing better than ever — except for the big red and yellow signs announcing the store closing.

A Borders spokeswoman said the company's roughly 400 remaining stores should be closed by the end of September. In Oak Park, that means 28 people will be out of a job.

Related:

Mary Bierma walked out of the store empty handed Thursday. While visiting family in Oak Park, she stopped by to see if she could find a sale copy of the cookbook Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food, written by Jessica Seinfeld.

Bierma said the store where she lives in Des Moines had shut down in the first round of Borders closings, and she did manage to find some books there before it went out of business.

"You see something in the store you hadn't thought of," she said," and it opens your mind to something else."

Her granddaughter was looking for a special edition of Mary Shelley's Dracula for a college course, but left empty-handed as well.

Bierma wasn't the only customer lamenting the downward spiral of many bookstores; another customer wondered aloud about the fate of coffee table books.

Last week, shelves had started to look bare inside the store, but a fresh shipment arrived. A sign at the front of the store said merchandise would still be coming from the warehouse.

The spokeswoman said she didn’t know how long stock would continue to be brought into the store, but did say items would be “replenished as needed.”

More than one customer browsing the aisles was overheard saying they were surprised to see new shipments still coming in. Earlier this week, another customer said she wasn’t that impressed with the sales — including fiction at 20 percent off and magazines at 40 percent off. Sales increased Thursday to 25-50 percent off, with fiction now at 30 percent off.

Friends Emmeritt Adair and Kevin Ackerman wandered quickly in and out of the store Thursday, seeking a reprieve from the heat in the blasting air conditioning of the bookstore.

Adair, now a college sophomore at Lincoln College, grew up in Oak Park and said he often bought movies and video games at Borders, including the entire Star Wars trilogy.

Ackerman, a senior at , said when it's necessary to get books, he'd go to The Book Table down the street.

Both said they'd like to see fill the space, which "would bring a lot of revenue to the area," Adair said.

There has been speculation that an Apple store may fill the soon-to-be vacant space that serves as an anchor at Harlem and Lake to the downtown shopping area. Other suggestions have included a microbrewery or Crate & Barrel.

The results of survey by the Village of Oak Park indicate residents would like to see a "general merchandise store" fill the space.