Greenlight Closes The Book On Prospect Lefferts Gardens Location

PROSPECT HEIGHTS, NY — Greenlight Bookstore will shutter one of its two Brooklyn storefronts in May, owner and co-founder Jessica Stockton-Bagnulo announced Monday.

Greenlight readers received the sad news in an email detailing the financial challenges the Flatbush Avenue bookshop has faced over the past years.

"We've tried for years but we simply can't make enough sales in this location to cover the cost of operating it," Stockton-Bagnulo said in a video message announcing the closure.

Stockton-Bagnulo added in the email, "We have done what we can in terms of short term solutions...but it's not enough."

Operational costs like rent and employee pay have outpaced sales for years at the Flatbush store, according to Stockton-Bagnulo. With revenue decreases across the company, keeping the location afloat at Flatbush Avenue and Fenimore Street was no longer an option.

The Greenlight Bookstore on Fulton Street and South Portland will remain open, and its stationary store and other partnerships will also remain intact, Stockton-Bagnulo said.

The closure will mean some layoffs for the company, which will work with its workers' union to preserve equity and "autonomy for staff," Stockton-Bagnulo said.

Stockton-Bagnulo addressed a number of potential misconceptions about the closure in a video, including that the closure was related to its workers' union being costly.

"We had already been working on increasing wages for staff to pay folks something more like a living wage," Stockton-Bagnulo said. "Unionization isn't something that small businesses need to be afraid of."

Stockton-Bagnulo also said that the closure is not a sign that major online retailers are running bookstores out of business, or that people don't buy books anymore. Rather, it's a sign that Greenlight's business model was not working in this particular neighborhood.

"This isn't about Amazon destroying all bookstores, or the fact that people don't buy books anymore," Stockton-Bagnulo said.

"Amazon is an enormously problematic entity, that causes harm not only to bookstores but to cities and towns and workers and small business owners and the global climate ... but at the same time, the number of bookstores in the US continues to grow."

Greenlight will continue to work with neighborhood partners, including the Prospect Lefferts Gardens Neighborhood Association, to bring the Flatbush areas pop-ups and special events.

The store will also hold a goodbye celebration in the coming month.

"I think maybe more than any other kind of business, the closure of a book store elicits a particular kind of grief. And it's okay, to sit with that grief for as long as we need to," Stockton-Bagnulo said. "Ultimately this is a story about a bookstore finding a way to go on."