Village Books & Paper Dreams to Open in Lynden, Washington

Printer-friendly versionPrinter-friendly version

With Village Books & Paper Dreams’ 35th anniversary on the horizon this June, store founders and co-owners Chuck and Dee Robinson have announced plans to open a branch store in Lynden, Washington, 20 miles north of their flagship location in Bellingham’s Fairhaven Historic District.


A rendering of the building that will house Village Books & Paper Dreams' new store in Lynden. Washington, as well as a 35-room inn, a cafe, and other stores

The new 3,000-square-foot store, which will sell a combination of books, gifts, and cards, is expected to open in November. “It will pretty clearly be a bookstore, just with lots of cards and gifts in it,” said Chuck Robinson, a former president of the American Booksellers Association. The new store will be loosely organized by topic with both books and non-books featured in each section.

The Robinsons have signed a five-year lease with two five-year renewal options for space in Lynden’s Waples Mercantile Building, which is currently undergoing extensive renovations. “We had decided if we were going to go for it, we were going to go for it. I think with this kind of a business, it’s got to be more than a one-year sort of thing,” Robinson said.

The Front Street building, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, will also feature a 35-room inn and several other businesses, including an Avenue Bread café and the Drizzle Olive Oil and Vinegar Tasting Room. An open plan will allow customers to pass easily from the inn to the bookstore to the café.

The Robinsons first explored the idea of a second location during the 2011 holiday season with a pop-up store in a mall. The three-month experiment taught them a lot, Chuck Robinson said, “mainly that we don’t really want to be in a mall.” However, he and Dee, who retired last year, wanted to see if they could reach a different customer base in the northern part of the county, where they would attract more Canadian customers.

Robinson said that he will hire new staff for the Lynden location and will definitely include recruits from the local community, but is still figuring out how the management team will rotate among the stores.

“The north county will be new territory for us, but we already have a large number of customers there," said Paul Hanson, Village Books & Paper Dreams general manager.  "We're happy to provide a more convenient location for folks who've been loyal to the business for years."

Before committing to the decision to open a second store in scenic Lynden, the Robinsons, whose store was recently shortlisted for Publishers Weekly’s Bookstore of the Year Award, received help from their friends at other bookstores.

“It happens all the time in this business. Most of us wouldn’t be around if it weren’t for all of our friends,” Robinson said.

They talked a great deal with Bob Sommer and Gayle Shanks, two of the three co-owners of Tempe, Arizona’s Changing Hands Bookstore, which in June 2014 celebrated the opening of a second location, in Phoenix.

Robinson said he also got many of the new store’s fixtures from Joyce Meskis, the owner of Denver’s Tattered Cover Book Store, whose Highlands Ranch store was moving to a smaller location in Aspen Grove.

Over the years, Village Books & Paper Dreams has won multiple Mayor’s Arts Awards and Washington State’s Outstanding Philanthropic Small Business Award for its numerous partnerships.

“All the nonprofit organizations we work with are spread throughout the county, and a lot of those partnerships will extend to this store as well,” Robinson said. That’s kind of how we built the business. We made a lot of partnerships with other businesses and nonprofits.”

The Robinsons already have deep ties to the county library system, which has a branch in Lynden, as well as the Whatcom Literacy Council, so they plan to do some fundraising for them, Robinson said. He also said he plans to reach out to Lynden’s Jansen Art Center.