The former Marshall Field and Company building at 1144 Lake St. in Oak Park will likely be home to a chain bookstore — again.
The historic building will soon feature a Barnes & Noble location, as leadership at the bookseller told Wednesday Journal it’s reached an agreement to turn part of the building into a 25,000 square foot, two-level store complete with a cafe. The store is expected to open next summer, according to Janine Flanigan, Barnes & Noble’s vice president of store planning and design.
“We’ve been very successful with our new store openings, and we’re really looking forward to opening this store,” she said. “We have a plan to really tailor our assortment to the community and what the community likes.”
Barnes & Noble signing on as a flagship retail offering for the building would be welcome news for Oak Park leaders, as the location has long struggled to find an anchor tenant. Plans for a Dom’s Kitchen & Market grocery store location to take over the space were scrapped before the company closed all its locations in 2024.
Oak Park’s new Assistant Village Manager for Economic Vitality John Melaniphy said he hadn’t yet reviewed any documents suggesting that the deal is done. Considering the history of the building and the many businesses who’ve “kicked the tires” on leasing the space, he warned against jumping the gun.
“I generally don’t acknowledge real estate deals until they are completed,” said Melaniphy, who started in the position three weeks ago. “I look forward to the day that we can declare that a retailer is fully occupying that space and that we have a fully executed deal for the landlord, for the village and for the end user, but today is not that day.”
He also said that any redevelopment of the property will likely require a village partnership involving economic incentives to help any retailer who moves into the building overcome some of the structural challenges that have kept the nearly 100 year old building vacant for so many years.
“In my opinion, it will take a public-private partnership with the village and the landlord and any potential retailer to reach consensus on how each of those entity shares in paying for the extraordinary costs to revitalize this property,” he said. “These economic development tools are used to provide incentives to help a landlord, or developer or retailer reoccupy a vacant space that may be dealing with chronic vacancy or other extenuating circumstances.”
Still, Melaniphy said that getting an anchor tenant into 1144 Lake Street is a priority for the village as it would be a major boon to Oak Park’s economy and has the potential to draw more people from around the region to shop in Downtown Oak Park.
The building at the intersection of Lake Street and Harlem Avenue was formerly a Borders bookstore, prior to that nationwide chain going bust in 2011. Barnes & Noble acquired the rights to the chain’s intellectual property assets shortly after.
“We know that there’s an appetite for a bookstore in the neighborhood,” Flanigan said.
Following the closing of The Book Table early this year, two independent and locally owned bookstores have either opened or are about to open in Oak Park. Dandelion Bookshop is open at 139 S. Oak Park Ave. And, as the Journal reports today, The Book Loft will open in August in a portion of the space previously occupied by the Book Table.
The new Barnes & Noble location is just the latest location announced in a push for more stores in Chicagoland over the last few years, following the opening of new stores in Chicago’s Wicker Park and Lincoln Park neighborhoods and a return for the bookseller to Old Orchard Mall in Skokie.
“A few years ago everything in our Chicago markets seemed to be underserved, we’d closed a bunch of stores, we hadn’t opened any, so there’s been a real concentration in that area to open new stores,” Flanigan said.
While some nationwide retailers have looked to cut back on brick-and-mortar real estate in the years following the COVID-19 pandemic, Barnes & Noble has looked to capitalize on making their stores a welcoming shared space for communities.
“What we became either during COVID or coming out of COVID was really being a gathering place for people,” she said. “We really create the environment for people to come in and browse and really just be comfortable in our stores.”
This demand for community spaces has risen alongside a resurgent interest in reading, Flanigan said.
Company leaders vowed to open up at least 60 new stores nationwide in 2025, according to Fast Company.
The design and architectural heritage of the Marshall Field building gives the company the opportunity to bring a stand-out location to Oak Park.
“The structure of the building, the exterior of the building, is just beautiful,” Flanigan said.
