Brookline Booksmith, Brookline, Mass., will undergo a major expansion, adding a 4,000-square-foot space two doors down from its current location. The Boston Globe reported that in addition to an expanded children's section, a cookbook area and a section devoted to the store's Transnational Series, the new space will include a restaurant with a full liquor license. Brookline Booksmith will take over the space in the summer, with plans to open next fall.
"We're a bookstore first. A place for social discourse, conversation, discovery," said Booksmith president Jed Smith, adding that the expansion will allow the community "to continue the conversation and provide a comfortable place to talk."
Booksmith's holiday pop-up at a former coffee shop on the block "proved there was an appetite in the community for an expanded offering," the Globe noted. Co-manager Lisa Gozashti described the new space as "an opportunity to reflect back to the community who they are. Brookline is global, and our customers show us who they are with what they buy, and this new phase will be a deep reflection of what they've asked us to be." She noted that the space would be defined by warmth and companionship, "an intimate space with no affectation" with a "tremendous amount of heart in it."
At the recent meeting before the Brookline Board of Selectmen regarding Brookline's liquor license, "an ovation greeted its unanimous approval," the Globe wrote. Smith said his lawyer told him that he'd never heard an ovation for a liquor license before.