r/rit • u/VisiblePartyPaySaver Third Year | CIT Major • 2d ago

New Barnes & Noble will open!

I noticed a new Barnes & Noble will be opening at a former Party City near Old Navy! It will definitely be smaller than the old one but it is nice to see, for context RIT bought the former 2 floor Barnes & Noble building near Park Point and they have offices there, and there hasn't been one in Henrietta since.

45 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

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48

u/Ok_Dirt_6047 2d ago

I’d hardly call the old B&N at Park Point a “real” B&N, that was a glorified campus store. And there were always offices on the 2nd floor, it’s just the whole building now.

Head about 3-5 miles further into Pittsford and you’ll find a real B&N

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u/AeniasGaming CSEC '24 | Look for the Litten at hockey! 2d ago

Eh, I’d consider it real. It had the Starbucks, it had the kiddie section, it had a lot of Gundams for a few years… checks all the boxes for me.

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u/bbbbbthatsfivebees Class of '25 2d ago

I don't remember it having a Starbucks! Maybe it did, but the coffee shop at Park Point was always Lovin' Cup from what I remember.

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u/PGleo86 IT 2017 2d ago

It definitely did - when you were standing at the registers, it was off to the right, in the back corner of the building (corner closest to the Park Point apartments bordering Jefferson). My mom got something from there EVERY TIME we were in that B&N.

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u/Deafsnake1979 1d ago

Former RIT alumni from 2006-09 here - it did have a Starbucks. The one in marketplace was better, though.

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u/meowchickenfish Verified on Snapchat & RIT Alumni - MeowChickenFish 1d ago

Lovin Cup doesn't do to-go cups!?!

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u/ITS-Clay ITS | Clay 1d ago

It was a B&N subsidiary that provided college bookstores instead of being a full B&N store.

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u/mahouyousei International Studies 2010 1d ago

I’d still say it was a reasonably sized B&N for what it was, too. I was there 2006-2010 and my first year there was the last year of the campus bookstore in the SAU which had such a limited selection of non-school related books for leisure reading. One half shelf dedicated to manga haha. Once the B&N opened it had it’s own manga section which was a vast improvement, as well has having the usual fiction/non-fiction and media sections too. It was nice. And since this was pre-IRS audit, I could actually spend Tiger Bucks in there! I got soooo much manga it was insane. I didn’t know how to bring it all home when I finally graduated.

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u/Stygian_Shadow 2d ago

Unless you are thinking a couple B&N staff offices, no, there were not always offices on the second floor. The second floor used to be more space for regular book sales and then half of the second floor was textbooks and school supplies (art class stuff, lab supplies, etc).

The Park Point store was a real typical B&N college bookstore, just like the UofR one

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u/bbbbbthatsfivebees Class of '25 2d ago

In 2019 the second floor was mostly offices. I remember it being more than half offices, and then the remaining little bit of retail space up there was for lab kits and art supplies. You could see they used to have a kids area, but only the carpet remained from what I can remember.

I just remember it being mostly supplies on the first floor, just stacks and stacks of notebooks, paints, clay kits, science lab kits, scantron sheets, etc. The actual books were relegated to the very back of the store.

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u/Stygian_Shadow 2d ago

Correct. Towards the end of its life it really wasn’t much of a true Barnes and Noble anymore. Just wanted to point out that the second floor wasn’t “always offices”

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u/jburgs22 2d ago

Agreed. That was more of an RIT bookstore with a B&N vibe that was for some reason put on the extra corner of the property instead of the center of campus.

Although the Pittsford B&N is great and huge too, I do think Henrietta needs one too. Pittsford is the only Rochester store?

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u/VisiblePartyPaySaver Third Year | CIT Major 2d ago

Nah there are a bunch of others such as near U of R and in Victor.

2

u/LManD224 NMID 2019 2d ago

The Victor one is just a mini-store in the Eastview Mall and the College Town one is similar to what the Park Point one was to RIT but for UofR.

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u/VisiblePartyPaySaver Third Year | CIT Major 2d ago

Ah, well there's also one in Webster. (Plus there's another seemingly mini-store in the Greece mall)

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u/gsapienza 2d ago

There weren’t always offices up there when I was there in 2011-2016 (maybe one or two)

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u/VisiblePartyPaySaver Third Year | CIT Major 2d ago

I grew up going to the Pittsford one. What were the offices on the second floor of the Park Point one for?

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u/ritwebguy ITS 1d ago

The old store was run by Barnes & Noble College Booksellers, a subsidiary of B&N that contracts with schools to run their bookstores. BNCB stores aren't "real" B&N stores, though they like to make them look like it. They focus more on what students need than on the wade range of products sold at regular B&N locations.

I don't know if this is always/still the case, but at the time they came to RIT, BNCB seemed to like to build their stores to make them look like regular B&N stores to attract outside sales, often it seems to the detriment of student convenience. Locally, the Park Point store was not convenient to campus but was very visible to anyone driving down Jefferson Road, just like the UofR store that's way out in Collge Town rather than on the River Campus where most of the students are. A colleague at a school in another state told me once that her school's store was a 15 minute drive from their campus!

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u/MikeSaffran 9h ago

It most definitely did have a Starbucks; and the second floor was not always offices. It was the second floor of the retail store — just like other B&Ns.

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u/lickmysackett 1d ago

Slight correction - RIT has the whole building. University Advancement is on the entire first floor, RIT Certified, Sponsored Programs Accounting, Procurement Services, and Controllers Office are on the second.

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u/VisiblePartyPaySaver Third Year | CIT Major 1d ago

I said RIT bought the whole building 

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u/bbbbbthatsfivebees Class of '25 2d ago

RIT bought the former 2 floor Barnes & Noble

Bit of a correction here -- RIT always had office space on the second floor of B&N. It was never really a "full" B&N, more of a glorified campus bookstore that had SOME popular new books for sale. They had a section in the back that had small versions of all the sections you'd find in a normal B&N, but nowhere near the same size.

They also didn't buy the building specifically to turn it into office space. It was already struggling, even as a campus bookstore, so they died immediately during COVID. They were going under my freshman year and had a hard time even keeping the building in good shape. See also: My post from 2019. RIT buying it was a no-brainer, as it's where I think they currently have their alumni outreach and financial departments.

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u/Stygian_Shadow 2d ago

They did not always have offices on the second floor used

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u/ITS-Clay ITS | Clay 1d ago

Not offices, but the Digital Den was there for at least part of the time since Barnes & Noble College Booksellers didn't sell computers. It wasn't very convenient even though it was on the RIT superblock.

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u/VisiblePartyPaySaver Third Year | CIT Major 2d ago

I see, I remember going into it at least once iirc but I never realized RIT always had office space there.

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u/Jmanitou 2d ago

that’s sick

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u/2009impala 2d ago

Doesn't really count if it's a 26 minute drive from campus.

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u/VisiblePartyPaySaver Third Year | CIT Major 2d ago

Huh it's a 10 minute drive at most? I'm talking about the plaza across from the Marketplace mall, not Eastview

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u/2009impala 2d ago

Maybe if you consider traffic laws optional.

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u/VisiblePartyPaySaver Third Year | CIT Major 2d ago

What how slow do you drive 🥀

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u/Bingo_Bongo_85 2d ago

Check the username

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u/VisiblePartyPaySaver Third Year | CIT Major 2d ago

It'd be illegal to drive that slow if it took that long to get there 😂

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u/reallynothingmuch 2d ago

Google Maps says it’s a 7 minute drive. It’s literally opening just down Jefferson Road