Flintridge Bookstore building sells for $4.9M, store to move operations in February
The bookstore and coffee shop will stay at 1010 Foothill Blvd. until new owner Glendale mortgage lender HouseAmerica takes over the space in March.
Flintridge Bookstore & Coffeehouse will be moving from its current location at 1010 Foothill Blvd. into a smaller La Cañada storefront in February, according to owner Peter Wannier, who confirmed the building was sold earlier this month for $4.9 million, $450,000 under its listing price in June.
Wannier, who with his wife Lenora first opened the business in 2007 on the 900 block of Foothill with the intention of expanding, later developed the existing 6,340-square-foot storefront with its distinctive clock tower at the corner of Foothill and Chevy Chase Drive and held a ribbon-cutting event there in February 2011.
The business will continue to operate as a lessee of the space through February until its new owner, Glendale mortgage lender House America, takes over the space in March.
Wannier would not provide the store’s next location, as details of that lease were still being worked out. He did say the coffee shop would not reopen at the new site.
“We’ll still have some people meeting at our site, but we’re not going to continue running the coffee shop part of the business,” he said of the new configuration. “It will be a smaller space that will be more in keeping with the size of the town and its needs.”
The store owner said while there might possibly be a day or two when the business was not fully operational during the physical move, the plan was for the transition to be as seamless as possible.
Wannier recalled April 2009, when the business continued operations after a big-rig crashed into the storefront, then located at 964 Foothill.
“We made sales every single day — we never stopped selling books,” he said. “If we can make it with a truck coming through our store, we can probably make it without a truck coming through our store.”
He said store employees were busy preparing for a full slate of activities scheduled this weekend as part of the Black Friday and Small Business Saturday holiday shopping season and would continue to work throughout the winter holidays.
