SAN JOSE — Amazon Books is coming to Santana Row, marking a rare occurrence in today’s turbulent world of Bay Area retail: a new bricks and mortar bookstore.
The Amazon Books outlet was confirmed on Thursday by both Amazon and Federal Realty, the developer of the shopping center.
“We are excited to be bringing Amazon Books to Santana Row in 2017, and we are currently hiring store managers and associates,” said Deborah Bass, a spokeswoman for Amazon.
The Amazon Books store will be 5,500 square feet in size and located at Tatum Lane and Santana Row, according to Federal Realty. The future Amazon site will be in the location of a former Brooks Brothers store.
The new store from Amazon marks a return of a bookseller to Santana Row for the first time in six years. In 2011, Borders Books shut its doors as part of a company-wide liquidation amid the economic devastation wrought by the Great Recession.
Amazon Books now is open in San Diego, Seattle, Portland and Chicago, along with two locations in Massachusetts. The retailer also has six stores listed as coming soon. The first Bay Area stores are expected to be in Santana Row and Walnut Creek’s Broadway Plaza retail center, the list shows.
Seattle-based Amazon has job openings for several locations in the Bay Area, according to the digital retailer’s site. These include a store manager in Santana Row and jobs in San Jose, Cupertino and San Francisco.
The Great Recession, combined with the steady rise of book sales through online portals such as Amazon.com, undermined the fortunes of numerous booksellers with a physical store presence. Borders, Waldenbooks, B. Dalton and Brentanos were among the high-profile bookstore chains that went out of business.
“Bookstores have closed all over the place, so it’s encouraging to see things coming from the other direction with Amazon Books entering the market,” said Matt Sweeney, a managing director in the retail division of Newmark Cornish & Carey, a commercial realty brokerage.
Increasingly, all retailers are under pressure to maintain both an online presence and physical stores, analysts said.
“All retail has to be omni-channel,” Sweeney said. “You have to have brick-and-mortar sites as well as a strong internet channel. But it’s tough for bookstores. You can go to Amazon and order a book and have it show up a few days later.”
