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End of Line for Co-Op?
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Business New Haven
9/18/2000
By: BNH
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NEW HAVEN - Wallace Book Stores, which manages the Yale Co-Op, has terminated its ten-year agreement to manage the financially troubled store for the Yale Co-Operative Corp. and will leave by November 1. The Co-Op has been under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection since last November to shelter it from creditors while it attempts to reorganize. The 115-year-old Co-Op, the nation's oldest college bookstore, has been in financial distress since its previous landlord, Yale University, evicted it from its Broadway home in 1997. At the same time Yale revoked the Co-Op's status as the university's official bookstore, instead selling that designation to chain-store giant Barnes & Noble.
In December 1998, the Lexington, Ky.-based Wallace Book Stores, which manages some 100 college bookstores nationwide, agreed to a ten-year management contract that involved reconfiguring the Co-Op into a department store-type retail outlet. But it never really delivered on that promise, leaving the Co-Op a bargain-basement alternative to its Broadway successor. The Wallace announcement also strikes a blow to the Chapel Square Mall where the Co-Op is now located, with an annex at 44 York Street. Yale Co-Operative Corp. directors say they are seeking a new vendor for the store.
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