Bookstore’s closing, despite protests, will leave a gap in town center’s heart

The shop, part of the Barnes & Noble Booksellers chain’s B. Dalton division, is falling prey to corporate cost-cutting: The company is closing the remaining 50 stores in the subsidiary operation. After word spread this fall, Belmont residents rallied in an effort save Charlesbank, including two young students who handed out fliers protesting the decision. But still, come Jan. 16, Charlesbank will shut its doors, according to a spokeswoman for the company.

Belmont Center is not alone among downtowns finding themselves devoid of a bookstore, although the community will have still have a store selling used works, Annie’s Book Stop, on Belmont Street near the Watertown line, as well as an antiquarian bookseller.

But the community will no longer have a general-interest bookstore that sells new books in its tidy downtown. Lexington found itself in the same situation early this year when Waldenbooks closed, after the town had already lost its other bookseller, the Sundial Bookstore, the summer before. When the Waldenbooks at the Westgate Mall closes in January, Brockton will also have no general-interest bookseller.

And in August, the beloved Kate’s Mystery Books, which had operated for 26 years, closed its doors in North Cambridge.

The forces conspiring against small bookstores, especially independent sellers, are well documented: the ease, and sizable discounts, of buying books online; the consolidation of the book-selling industry; the recession.

Still, some independent bookstores have survived, even thrived. The list includes the Brookline Booksmith in Coolidge Corner, which outlived a nearby Barnes & Noble; Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, sold last year to a Wellesley couple; Bookends, an independent shop in Winchester; and Newtonville Books in Newton.

State Representative Will Brownsberger looked into the Charlesbank’s closing after several of his constituents called him. He spoke by telephone with Barnes & Noble’s chief operating officer, Mitchell S. Clipper, who made it clear that there was no hope of keeping the Belmont store open, Brownsberger said.

“It sounded like they’d given it a hard look and really concluded that they couldn’t make money in this location,’’ the Belmont Democrat said. “They’ve been closing smaller stores.’’

Charlesbank hadn’t been profitable for the past five years, and last year the store had six-figure losses, according to Mary Ellen Keating, a spokeswoman for Barnes & Noble.

B. Dalton opened in the 1960s and its bookstores first appeared in suburban shopping centers. By 1986, when Barnes & Noble took over, the chain had nearly 800 bookstores. But by the late 1980s, with fewer malls being built and sales sluggish, Barnes & Noble started closing some of the B. Dalton stores. With only the 50 outlets remaining, including Charlesbank, Barnes & Noble decided to close them all.

As the two main rivals in the industry, both Borders Inc. and Barnes & Noble have been closing their struggling smaller stores, which are often in suburban malls, to focus on their larger stores. Borders announced last month that it would close all of its remaining Waldenbooks in the state, located in malls in Marlborough, Danvers and Springfield as well as Brockton.

In Belmont, some residents fought to save the store. They asked Barnes & Noble, which leases its Leonard Street space between a Starbucks and a Bruegger’s, to delay the closing for a year and give them a chance to patronize the store more to try to increase sales.

“My message to Barnes & Noble was, ‘We realize you’re confronting some tough economics, but let’s see as a community if we can help you out,’ ’’ said Pierre Valette, who has often shopped at Charlesbank with his four children. “The prospect of the closing was a wake-up call to friends of ours and the community, that this was something we care about and maybe we can help them stay in business.’’

His 11-year-old daughter, Téa, and her 12-year-old friend, Willa Cosinuke, decided to take action. They created and handed out fliers protesting the closing in late October, asking people to call Barnes & Noble to voice their concern.

“I wanted to keep the bookstore open because I think there should be an educational place for the kids in Belmont Center to hang out,’’ Willa said. “If my parents were somewhere like Starbucks, I could go there and look for books.’’

Téa said she still hopes the bookstore can stay.

“It’s really important,’’ she said, “to have a bookstore in a kid’s life so they can read.’’

If Charlesbank closes, would-be customers would have to travel to Arlington to find the closest bookstore, about 2 miles away.

Keating said there was no hope for a reprieve.

“It’s never easy to make a decision to close the store,’’ she said. “It’s a business decision. Unfortunately, the decision’s been made at this point.’’

Kathleen Burge can be reached at kburge@globe.com.