Congratulations to Sue Zumberge, owner of SubText: A Bookstore, St. Paul, Minn., which celebrates its grand opening this week. The Pioneer Press spoke with Zumberge and her business partners June Berkowitz--owner of the building as well as Nina's Coffee Cafe upstairs in the Blair Arcade--and Marcus Mayer, who is selling books for young readers as a "business withing the business" called Addendum at SubText.
"Now I can create my own vision of a neighborhood bookstore," said Zumberge, former manager of Garrison Keillor's Common Good Books, which relocated from Cathedral Hill to the Macalester College campus earlier this year.
Berkowitz, who is subsidizing rent and utilities for the bookstore, said, "I'm happy to finance Sue's space to keep her overhead low so she can get a start."
Zumberge and Berkowitz "are striving for upstairs-downstairs synergy between Nina's and SubText," the Pioneer Press wrote. "We see the store as a more quiet extension of the cafe," said Zumberge, adding, "I did want a community bookstore. It's the wave of the future. If you are going to have independents, they can't be big-box stores."
