Barnes & Noble’s comeback tour is rolling into Rockwall.
The bookseller leased 20,400 square feet at The Plaza shopping center at 1015 East Interstate 30, which is owned by Florida REIT CTO Realty Growth, the Dallas Business Journal reported. It is the fast-growing Dallas suburb’s first Barnes & Noble and part of the retailer’s national comeback.
The store is scheduled to open by late August and will feature an updated store design, including a B&N Café and a mix of books, gifts, games, puzzles and vinyl records. The space previously housed Staples, which closed in mid-January.
Dallas-based Weitzman represented the tenant. CTO Realty Growth acquired the 446,500-square-foot shopping center in 2023 for $61.2 million, which is $137 per square foot. Its tenants include JCPenney, Belk, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Best Buy, Ulta and HomeGoods.
Rockwall, the seat of one of Texas’ fastest-growing counties, recently attracted a wave of major tenants, including H-E-B and Ikea.
The Rockwall store adds to Barnes & Noble’s 17 locations across Dallas-Fort Worth. The company aimed to open 67 new stores last year after opening more new locations in 2023 than it had in the entire prior decade, CEO James Daunt said. One of those recent additions was at Watters Creek Village in Allen, which opened in October.
Daunt said Barnes & Noble evaluates locations based on factors such as market size, anticipated sales, lack of nearby competitors and strong local co-tenancy. He claimed the book giant’s advantage lies in its mass appeal “to every age and demographic,” he said.
The company operates more than 650 stores nationwide and has emerged from a slump between 2009 and 2019, when revenue and store count declined. Its growth strategy focuses on modernizing its fleet by relocating away from underperforming mall locations and opening stores in underserved markets.
Not all divisions of the business are thriving. Café sales have dipped, and the newsstand segment is shrinking, but Barnes & Noble has seen notable gains in vinyl, DVDs, CDs, toys and games.
— Judah Duke
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