Powell’s Books just announced that as of June 30, they will be closing two of their three stores at the Portland Airport—the two concourse stores will close, and the “Oregon Marketplace Store” (the one located before security) will remain open.
My first thought was that this was more “death of bookstores” stuff, but in an official statement Powell’s CEO Miriam Sontz places the blame for the store closures square on the Port of Portland: “The Port of Portland is working on a new vision for retail at PDX, and in spite of our efforts to negotiate a renewal of our leases and review other options for maintaining a concourse presence, we were unable to reach an agreement. We regret deeply the closure of these two stores.”
I regret it toooooooo. Now where am I going to last-minute panic-buy a Stephen King book I’ve already read just in case the plane breaks down or gets stuck circling for hours in some sort of Speed-esque terrorist situation and the three books and a Kindle I already have packed aren’t enough? (Before I go through security, you say? Ugh, fine.)
Also adding that this will make people loose their jobs just because port of portland does not want to renew their lease.
This is a horrible move by PDX. They need to remember that Portland is a city of small businesses. I love going to the airport and shopping and eating at the comfortable restaurants.
I worked at the airport for a while, and even though this appears to be crappy, PDX is actually in the process of bringing in even more local businesses. The current ones are local franchises managed by huge corporations that have a contract with the airport, but they are moving away from that. Currently PDX has more local businesses than any other airport in the states, and they’re only going to get more. We really don’t need 3 Powell’s when we could have them plus two other local businesses.