After spending 46 years in downtown Madison at its 315 W. Gorham St. location, the bookstore A Room of One’s Own has found a new home in Madison on Atwood Ave.
According to a post on the store’s Facebook page on Monday, the bookstore signed a 20-year lease with the option to sign on for another 20 years, which the owners say will provide more stability than the business ever had at its downtown location.
“It’ll be a brand new space with the same bookish nerds behind the curation and vision of Room,” the Facebook post said. “We will continue to actively nourish a queer-ecstatic, anti-racist, intersectional feminist space.”
The move follows proposed redevelopment by Core Spaces, the development company behind buildings like The Hub and The James. According to Tone Madison, the new apartment building would take up the majority of the 300 block of State Street, displacing businesses like Red Rock Saloon and Community Pharmacy.
The potential $100 million-plus project hasn’t been officially approved yet, however Core Spaces hopes to begin construction on the apartment building in the fall of 2021.
The bookstore is now moving into the space previously occupied by Threshold — an event and co-working space which several small businesses in Madison used. However due in part to the COVID-19 pandemic, Threshold is now online-only.
“We’ve had a few months to process this move. It was really hard at first,” the bookstore’s owners wrote in an Instagram post announcing the move. “Thank you for your support. Your support through the pandemic has made some difficult decisions easier to make.”
Work on the new location is expected to start in April so it can be fully operational by June.
“We could not be more excited to dig into this new space, make it our own and be here for decades to come,” the post said.
Mackenzie is the first ever editor of The Beet and actually made of over 62% beet.
