First and foremost, there is this stunning fact: After Borders is gone, it will leave Boston, the literary capital of the United States, with exactly one major bookstore within the city limits. That store is the Barnes & Noble in the Prudential Center, and who knows how long it will be around.
To put this in perspective, Columbus, Ohio, has more major bookstores than Boston — many more. So do San Diego and San Jose and just about any other city you can name. It wasn’t that long ago when the Harvard Bookstore stood on Newbury Street across from the massive Waterstone’s, not far from the Brentano’s in the Copley Mall.
I get the impact of the Kindle and the iPad and the fact that everyone who owns one has an entire bookstore in the palm of their hands. I get that Borders went bankrupt and is shutting a bunch of its stores.
But I was in that Borders yesterday, as I am on more than a few days, and the place was as it always is — packed. There was a line at the checkout, even with five cashiers. There was a crowd at the magazine racks. There were people in every leather chair and sofa. There were passersby combing the bargain racks on the plaza outside.
Which gets to my other point. Borders is the living room of Downtown Crossing, with a patio thrown in for good measure. With its regal 30-foot ceilings, 35,000 square feet of space, and prominent spot on just about the busiest corner in town, it is where Boston goes when it needs a quiet break.
Can you picture the site as another clothing store for teenage girls, or a purveyor of cellphones, or an off-price retailer like all the others down the street? Worse, can you picture it empty while the Clarendon Group, the reputable landlord, waits for the right tenant to knock on its door? Downtown Crossing, already sick, will die overnight.
