Barnes & Noble — Attraction in Maui

There was a bookstore earthquake on the Valley Isle back in 2018. As we all know, book stores have been going the way of music stores - to the boneyard. Waldenbooks & Borders both had locations in the QKC mall, both are gone. The larger Borders location in the Maui Marketplace closed in 2011 and left the central Maui area without a true bookstore ever since.

BACK IN THE DAY: In came Barnes & Noble who opened up shop in the Lahaina Gateway back in 2008, in a behemoth 24,000 SF spot complete with a coffee & snack bar. The seismic activity was curtailed for 10 years. Lahaina residents had a great place to shop and hangout at. The rest of the island either had to commute 20+ miles, settle for the limited selections at the big box retailers or order online. Fine.

Enter 2017 and a 6.0 magnitude shaker came. News reports of a lease dispute between B&N and Lahaina Gateway and a possible closing of the store surfaced in the papers and social media. A petition to save the store was started by a Maui teen which seemed to have rescued the store from sudden death, or so we thought, as the store was to stay open "for now".

2018 brought bittersweet news. B&N announced that they were leaving the Lahaina Gateway and relocating to the Maui Marketplace in Kahului in March. Devastating news for the west side but happiness for the population center of the rock.

CURRENT DAY: B&N opened up shop, temporarily, in the 11,000 SF former Petco spot which is over 50% smaller than its Lahaina footprint. Thus, there is no coffee/food bar but just a handful of chairs near the front windows. In addition to books and magazines, they sell a teeny tiny collection of vinyl records. I looked at one out of curiosity and they ran about $25.

OVERALL: Long live...

Really good place to get books. In the back isle theirs books about them roblox and Minecraft and those video games. If you have kids liking those games theirs books in the really back isle. You countinue walking forward in any isles and go in the back you'd find the gaming books. Even has huge dictionary's, a local school has bought 100 books and they are useful for the students that read the books. The cost of the books are cheap and the manager over their take really good care of this place. Tho, one lady was yelling at a kid one day for dropping books on the floor. She claimed " struggling to hold all her books ". I feel like the worker over their is a karen. Though, good place for everybody to read at. Especially going to school library's are good. Barney nobles are good and they will be 4.5 stars ( due to the karen incident that yelled at a child for struggling. ) so good sir or ma'am or them. Depends...

I would rate it less if possible. Worst customer service by the manager. Looking for a set of books, when I open the package it was incomplete. Asked for fastest way to get it tell me 10 days minimum but I have to pay for shipping or wait longer and they will get it to the store. I probably would have bought it if she would have offered a discount on the package (but she didn’t). I told her I really didn’t want to wait that long maybe I would just look online, her response was sassy from my point of view. “Or you could just support your local bookstore” so I said I would that’s why came but it’s incomplete she then replies “well it’s not our fault”. I just walked away. Felt her attitude was unnecessary. How do you want our community to support our only bookstore if you...