Globe Corner Bookstore put up for sale; owner cites health issues
Citing health reasons, the president of the Globe Corner Bookstore said yesterday that he plans to sell the 28-year-old Harvard Square travel book and map specialty shop and online store.
Patrick Carrier said he was diagnosed with a seizure disorder last summer, which grew worse in the fall. About five weeks ago, he said, he began talks with perspective buyers, whom he declined to name.
“If the economic climate were better we might have taken a look at hiring someone to do what I do at the store’’ until his health improves, he said.
But “the way things are I decided it made more sense just to sell.’’
Carrier opened and began running the Globe Corner Bookstore in 1982 for its original owner, Affiliated Publications, then the parent company of The Boston Globe.
The original store was located in Downtown Crossing.
Affiliated opened another location on Church Street in Cambridge in 1988. Then, in 1992, Carrier bought the Boston store, plus the Cambridge location, from the bookstore’s second corporate owner, McCaw Cellular Communications, which had formerly been partly owned by Affiliated. Carrier opened a third location in Back Bay in 1993.
The Downtown Crossing and Back Bay locations were closed in 1997 and 2000, respectively, and in 2006 the Harvard Square store moved into the space it currently occupies at 90 Mount Auburn St.
Earlier this month, the New England Mobile Book Fair in Newton announced that it, too, was up for sale.
In the past year, small bookstores in Belmont, Lexington, and Cambridge all shut their doors, citing lost business from online book sales, the recession, and other industry factors.
