With the announcement that Barnes & Noble will open a DeKalb store this fall, local bookstore owners are bracing for the impact a national chain will have on business.

Barnes & Noble will be located just south of Target along Sycamore Road, practically across the street from Borders Books and Music, 2520 Sycamore Road. Borders opened shop in late November of last year.

Don Rodrick, manager of the Junction Bookstore, 822 W. Lincoln Highway, said business clearly has gone down since Borders opened.

“What we’ve said all along is that this population base is not big enough to support two, much less three, big stores,” Rodrick said. “They may be depending on future population growth, and the town may be big enough to support that many stores in the future, but it isn’t that big yet. The customers have to come from somewhere.”

Rodrick has been one of the main opponents to national chains opening in DeKalb.

“That whole Barnes & Noble thing is something else,” Rodrick said. “If a Borders opens up somewhere, a Barnes & Noble has to open there and vice versa. If somebody thinks there’s a dollar somewhere, they have to split it.”

Rodrick hopes The Junction, banking on being the largest single-standing store in the region not part of any chain, is left standing after the chain wave ceases.

“The larger stores don’t offer anything we don’t offer,” he said. “They don’t stock more than we do, they don’t sell for less than we do. As a matter of fact, we sell for less.”

John Podulka, general manager of Borders, first reacted to being asked about Barnes & Noble with a genial laugh.

“Obviously, it will make things tough for the three big bookstores to survive once B&N opens,” he said. “For book buyers, though, this will mean increased selection.

“Maybe the Junction will continue to survive because they’re so darn close to campus,” he added. “Its easy for people who don’t have cars to walk over there.”

Podulka said the company feels good about its competitive position compared to Barnes & Noble.

“At the book end of things, we’re going head to head, but we offer a lot of products they don’t,” he said.

Both stores sell books and have cafes, he noted, but Borders considers selling music and movies integral to their business, and these are areas in which Barnes & Noble traditionally has offered little or no competition.

Others predict lessened effect

“I haven’t noticed that much of a change,” said Mark Hedborn of Book Muse Book Store, a used book shop in downtown DeKalb, “but 75 percent of my business is over the Internet.”

Hedborn said at Book Muse, 132 E. Lincoln Highway, he sells “anything that’s paper really, including posters, magazines and the occasional comic book, plus vinyl records.”

Other used book shops have been less fortunate.

Kevin’s Book Exchange, a shop across the street from Book Muse which sold second-hand books, comic books, magazines and video tapes, closed last year, as did No Strings Attached, which sold second-hand books and furniture.

Northern Lights, which formerly occupied half of the Grecian temple-shaped strip mall at the intersection of Lincoln Highway and the Kishwaukee River, closed two years ago. Northern Lights had started out as a used bookstore, then transformed into a new bookstore before its final incarnation as a comic store that sold new and used books, Hedborn said.

Richard Quest, the owner of Cornerstone Christian Supplies & Gifts, 2731 Sycamore Road, Suite C, a non-denominational Christian book store and gift shop, said business has remained stable since Borders opened up.

“I think I’ve even picked up customers,” he said.

Business significantly increased for him after he moved the shop from downtown to the northeast end of town, along the retail district on Sycamore Road, and the new Borders has provided a stimulant for Cornerstone.

“Barnes & Noble is not a threat to us either,” Quest said. “Their selection of Christian books is very minimal.”

“I’m wondering if this town is big enough to support two mega stores,” Quest continued. “I know our community is growing, but for two book stores that size … well, I was skeptical when Menard’s opened up, since we already had Lowe’s, so I guess I could be wrong. Maybe this way people will keep their money at home.”

There are three stores on or near campus that hardly have been affected by the new Borders and will likely not be affected much by the opening of a Barnes & Noble.

Both the University Bookstore in the Holmes Student Center and its privately owned competitor, Village Commons Book Store (VCB), 901 Lucinda Avenue, sell magazines and trade books as well as textbooks. The Newman Catholic Student Center, 512 Normal Road, fills a niche market, as it has a wide selection of Roman Catholic Christian devotional books and gifts.

VCB owner Lee Blankenship said, “I used to manage the 710 Book Store at Southern Illinois University before I bought the VCB, and when a Barnes & Noble opened up on the other side of town, much as the Borders has opened up on the other side of DeKalb, it didn’t affect us much.”