Iconic Acres Of Books Sells Downtown Site To City

By Kurt Helin
Editor

Jackie Smith wants readers to know it’s not time just yet to close the book on the popular Acres of Books store downtown.

Yes, they have agreed to sell the bookstore’s home of more than 40 years at 240 Long Beach Blvd. to the city’s Redevelopment Agency (RDA), but the hope is that it will spring up in a new location.

“We are not planning on absolutely closing down,” said Smith, co-owner of Acres of Books along with her husband Phil. “We are looking for a new location.”

And they have the time to do it — part of the deal worked out with the RDA gives Acres of Books a rent-free year in their current location, said Craig Beck, executive director of the RDA. He said that the deal still needs to be approved by the RDA board, which likely will take the issue up April 21.

“We have been negotiating with the Smiths for a year now,” Beck said referring to the owners of Acres of Books. “”Part of what has taken so long has been offering them help in finding a new location.”

Smith said that location likely will not be in downtown and may not be in Long Beach.

“We’re looking wherever,” she said. “We have certain criteria we are trying to meet and when we find a space that fits them, we’ll move.”

Bertrand Smith’s Acres of Books is an old-style bookstore that has been a draw for bibliophiles from throughout Southern California since it opened in 1934.

The Long Beach Boulevard space is packed with aisles and aisles of books — Smith estimates 700,000 titles. These are used books in every category: fiction, history, children, self-help, you name it. The store also has a number of rare and out-of-print books that draw in people trying to find things that are nowhere else.

Acres of Books’ fans said the best part of the store was its sheer size and the volume of books — people have spent hours wandering the aisles finding lost treasures.

“Unfortunately, that atmosphere is something that will be lost,” Smith said of the hopeful move. “We’ll be in somewhere smaller and have to have aisles that are ADA required width and different lighting. It just won’t have this atmosphere, but it will have lots of stuff.”

At a recent downtown neighborhoods meeting, Mayor Bob Foster and City Manager Pat West were implored to save Acres of Books.

But the purchase of the Acres of Books site, and the block that surrounds it, is designed to clear the way for another project that has long been sought in the downtown — and “art exchange.”

“We’re trying to create an art-themed building,” Beck said. “We’ve talked with the community about an art exchange where artists could live and have galleries to sell their work, where there would be a residential component. We have talked to (California State University, Long Beach) about maybe doing some art student housing.”

The goal of all of that would be to have a building that links the core of downtown with the East Village, Beck said.

He said that the RDA offered to have Acres of Books be a part of that, but Smith said that was not going to be a good fit. She said it was an emotional decision to move on.