Barnes & Noble College Booksellers, Inc. and DePaul University will open the doors to the largest bookstore of its kind in Chicagoland on June 1 in the DePaul Center at 1 E. Jackson Blvd. The 36,000-square-foot "academic superstore" spans campus and community, offering all the amenities of a world-class bookstore to South Loop residents and businesspeople, while also serving as DePaul's university bookstore.

The new academic superstore occupies much of the concourse and main floor of the DePaul Center – a space three times the size of the university’s previous bookstore. The store will include a Starbucks Café, a general reading area and reference department, and a marketplace on the first floor. Textbooks, school supplies and DePaul insignia clothing and giftware will be sold on the lower level. The new Barnes & Noble at DePaul University will be open from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sunday and employ approximately 75 people – many of them DePaul students – from the community.

Barnes & Noble at DePaul is designed to serve the needs of students and residents equally well, creating a vibrant community gathering place in the process. "We look forward to serving the needs of the students, staff and faculty at DePaul, as well as what we anticipate will be a large and growing number of customers from the surrounding neighborhood," said Carl Grath, store manager of Barnes & Noble at DePaul.

The bookstore resides in DePaul Center, the former Goldblatt’s Building, which was placed on the National Registry of Historic Places in 1989. While the exterior of the building – a key part of the historic architecture of Chicago – remains the same, the interior was extensively renovated. The bookstore also features a 20-foot mural depicting the sights of Chicago and DePaul spanning the stairwell from the first floor to the lower level, as well as a mural of famous authors in the Starbucks Café.

Barnes & Noble at DePaul supports the city’s desire to enliven this educational and cultural district 24/7. "Our campus master planning committee carefully considered the best commercial use for this prime retail space," said Scott L. Scarborough, DePaul’s executive vice president for operations. "The committee believed that a Barnes & Noble superstore would provide outstanding service to our students and faculty while energizing DePaul Center and the south end of State Street."

In building this new academic superstore – one of just 10 such "town and gown" Barnes & Noble college bookstores nationwide – DePaul University is pioneering a new way to build bridges and blur the boundaries between campus and community. From creating college-affiliated retirement communities, to building retail developments at the edge of campus, many other colleges and universities nationwide are seeking new ways to market their brands and build relationships with an ever-expanding universe of people.

"We’re delighted to be partnering with DePaul on this important project," said Patrick Maloney, executive vice president of Barnes & Noble College Booksellers, Inc. "We are at the epicenter of this growing town and gown trend with our academic superstore and our longstanding roots in the college bookstore business. We are honored to team up with DePaul on a bookstore that represents a new front door to the broader community." Maloney added that the new store will bring in additional revenue for the college, while helping to strengthen the surrounding community.

With an enrollment of 23,570 students on two city and four suburban campuses, DePaul is the eighth-largest private university in the United States and the largest Catholic university in the nation. DePaul is an innovative and diverse university offering pragmatic educational programs, including nationally ranked business and law programs.

About Barnes & Noble College Booksellers, Inc.

Barnes & Noble began as a college bookstore. Today it is one of the best-known retail brands in the U.S., and college bookstores are a key part of its 40-year-legacy and current operations. Barnes & Noble College Booksellers, Inc. – a privately-held sister company to Barnes & Noble, Inc., the nation’s largest bookseller – operates college bookstores at more than 500 institutions of higher education including Columbia University, California State at Los Angeles, Yale University, University of Pennsylvania, Nassau Community College, Johns Hopkins, the Coops at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Illinois college bookstores include the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, Roosevelt University and Illinois State University.

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