Village Books & Paper Dreams’ Second Location Aims for November 20 Opening

Village Books & Paper Dreams is slated to open its second location on Friday, November 20, in Lynden, Washington, according to store co-owner Chuck Robinson.

Lynden's Waples Mercantile Building under renovation.

“We hope we’re ready for November 20,” he said. “It’s going to require quite a few things to dovetail for it all to come together. Our leadership team has just been working really, really hard. There’s just so much that has to wait until the last minute.”

Robinson co-founded the original Village Books in Bellingham, Washington, 35 years ago with his wife, Dee, who retired from the business last year but has been helping with preparations for the new venture.

The 3,000-square-foot Lynden store will sell a combination of books, gifts, and cards in a more integrated layout than the Bellingham location, where book and non-book stock are separate, with Village Books and Paper Dreams having their own storefronts that are connected internally to provide customers with access to both.

Stock at the Lynden store, which is located in the northern part of the state, about 20 miles from the Bellingham location, will be loosely separated by category and both books and non-books will be featured in each section.

The new store is on Front Street in the Waples Mercantile Building, which is on the National Register of Historic Places and is currently at the tail-end of a series of major renovations. As construction finishes up at the new store, Robinson said his staff has been increasing their efforts to raise awareness about the opening.

Dee and Chuck Robinson in front of the Bellingham store.

“We’ve had articles [about the new store] in each of the last issues of our Chuckanut Reader,” he said. “We also have signs up in the [Bellingham] bookstore, and we’ve been selling discounted gift cards that are usable at the second store only.”

Through the end of December, the Lynden store will accept these special gift cards, which are being sold at $25 and $50 but have a $5 bonus added. The store will also be sending out postcards with a special offer to residents who live in zip codes close to the Lynden location.

Lynden and Bellingham are substantially different, both population and demographic-wise: Lynden, with a population of 14,000, has more of a small-town feel and its community culture has a strong Dutch influence, while Bellingham, with 80,000 people, is the largest city in Whatcom County. Robinson said he expects the Lynden store to bring in customers from further north, including from across the Canadian border.

“We’ve heard from many people who are saying they really can’t wait for our store in Lynden to open,” Robinson said.

In addition to planning for the new store, the Village Books and Paper Dreams family had an especially momentous summer. They celebrated the store’s 35th anniversary in June with a black tie party, and cheered on Robinson’s 2,400-mile bike trip from Washington to his hometown of Galva, Illinois, to raise money for the Book Industry Charitable Foundation (Binc), the Whatcom Community Foundation, and the Galva Foundation for Educational Enrichment. Despite an accident that caused him to resort to his RV for the final leg of his trip, Robinson collected pledges of nearly $35,000 for the three foundations.  

“We had begun preparing for the new store late last spring, but there wasn’t much to be done over the summer, although merchandising and floor manager Kelly Evert was placing orders for gift items during that time,” said Robinson. “We began intensely working on the project when I returned [from the bike trip] in August.”

As the store’s November 20 opening draws closer, workers are putting the finishing touches on the Waples Mercantile Building, which will also house a new 35-room inn; an Avenue Bread café; a taproom; and the Drizzle Olive Oil and Vinegar Tasting Room. Since the bookstore’s soft opening is so close to the holiday season, Robinson said that he will be joining with the building’s other occupants to host a grand opening celebration in January, once all the storefronts have opened.

When it comes to staffing the new store, Robinson said, “Not counting the management team, there are eight individuals who will be working in the Lynden store, and six live in Lynden. The additional two employees who live in Bellingham will probably work a little in both stores.”

Throughout the holiday season and into the first part of the year, Robinson said he and Village Books’ co-managers — general manager Paul Hanson, store manager Sarah Hutton, and Evert — will be rotating through the Lynden location on a daily basis to collectively manage store operations.

A break in the renovation work in Lynden.

“We have to figure out what we need as management; we might need shift management. We’ll see if someone naturally emerges as a leader up there,” Robinson said, adding that most of his bookselling colleagues with second store locations were “sort of aghast” upon learning there wouldn’t be a specifically assigned manager working at the Lynden store from the beginning.

“But it wasn’t immediately apparent who it should be,” said Robinson. “Since we wouldn’t want to bring in a new person, we thought this might be the more reasonable way to do it.”