Powell’s Books has completely closed its Household & Backyard garden retail store on Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard, one more casualty of the coronavirus economic downturn.
The bookstore declared the closure Thursday, noting the ongoing uncertainty activated by the pandemic. Powell’s shut its department at Portland International Airport in July but its 3 main stores – in Beaverton, downtown and on Hawthorne – are all again open.
The Property & Backyard garden retail store, just a few doorways down from its typical Hawthorne retail outlet, stocked textbooks and knickknacks devoted to cooking, gardening and other domestic arts. In 2016 the bookstore experienced planned to incorporate the two areas to make just one monumental keep but eventually withdrew all those designs.
Dozens of well known dining places and various neighborhood shops have shut during the pandemic and, with new orders in place restricting in-human being eating and the amount of persons who can be inside a store, additional closures are certainly in the offing.
Emily Powell, the bookstore’s proprietor and president, stated Monday that the Home & Backyard store represents a unique loss.
“It’s incredibly unfortunate. Section of what we cherished about that store, and about bookselling in normal, was it allowed us to be really unique to the Portland community.…It authorized us to stretch ourselves and market some thing a tiny distinctive,” Powell said.
Oregonian publications editor Amy Wang contributed to this report.
— Mike Rogoway | twitter: @rogoway | 503-294-7699