The city of Salinas will finally get a bookstore, when a new branch of Morgan Hill-based BookSmart moves into the National Steinbeck Center.
Colleen Finegan Bailey, the center’s executive director, says selecting the independent bookstore to fill the former Chicken Scratch Flats Cafe space is both a response to the impending closure of Sand City’s Borders, and a nod to the center’s community-oriented vision.
“The big-box model of bookstores is going away, but the smaller, independent bookstore model is catching on,” she says. “The store will offer not just Steinbeck books, but general-interest books that meet the needs of the Salinas community.”
BookSmart’s co-owners, Brad Jones and Cinda Meister, oversaw a store in Gilroy and ran the Morgan Hill location for 17 years. BookSmart was named Assembly District 27’s Small Business of the Year in 2010.
These achievements, combined with BookSmart’s bibliophile-friendly events, led Steinbeck Center staff to seek them out. Jones and Meister, in turn, were impressed by the Steinbeck Center and the Oldtown Salinas Association at a July 28 business mixer.
“I heard, ‘How can everybody in this room help you succeed?’ That’s something I’ve never heard spoken that way before,” Jones says.
The Steinbeck Center BookSmart store and cafe is scheduled to open in October.
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