SYRACUSE, N.Y. — Barnes & Noble Booksellers, the nation’s largest retail bookseller, has opened a new location at Destiny USA in Syracuse. The store, which held a formal-opening event on Wednesday morning, Aug. 28, is located on level 2 next to Lululemon. It’s in a space formerly occupied by Banana Republic. “We are excited to […]
SYRACUSE, N.Y. — Barnes & Noble Booksellers, the nation’s largest retail bookseller, has opened a new location at Destiny USA in Syracuse. The store, which held a formal-opening event on Wednesday morning, Aug. 28, is located on level 2 next to Lululemon. It’s in a space formerly occupied by Banana Republic. “We are excited to welcome Barnes & Noble to Destiny USA,” Alannah Gallagher, director of marketing at Destiny USA, said in a shopping center news release. “As a beloved brand in the literary world, Barnes & Noble offers something for everyone, and we’re confident that this new location will quickly become a favorite stop for shoppers and book enthusiasts alike.” The Destiny USA location now joins existing Barnes & Noble locations at 3956 Route 31 in Clay; 3454 Erie Boulevard East in the Raymour & Flanigan Plaza in DeWitt; and 4811 Commercial Drive in Consumer Square in New Hartford, per the Barnes & Noble website. “We are excited to expand our presence in central New York with this wonderful new Barnes & Noble,” James Daunt, CEO of New York City–based Barnes & Noble, said in a separate release from the bookseller. “We couldn’t be happier to be bringing a new bookstore to this community and look forward to welcoming our customers here…” The new Syracuse location is one of four new Barnes & Noble bookstores to open in August, alongside stores in New Mexico, Kentucky, and California. The company says it is “enjoying a period of tremendous growth as the strategy to hand control of each bookstore to its local booksellers has proven so successful.” Barnes & Noble says it is generating strong sales in its existing stores and has been opening many new locations after more than 15 years of declining store numbers. In 2023, the company opened more new bookstores in a single year than it had in the entire decade from 2009 to 2019, Barnes & Noble said. The bookseller added that it expects to open more than 50 new bookstores in 2024. The company also made headlines this week when Leonard Riggio — who had acquired the Barnes & Noble trade name and flagship bookstore in Manhattan in 1971 — died after dealing with Alzheimer’s disease at the age of 83, per an Associated Press report on the website of CNN Business. After more than 25 years as a publicly traded company, Barnes & Noble was acquired by Elliott Advisors (UK ) Limited in August 2019 and taken private, according to its website.