After 132 years in business, the owners of the Dartmouth Bookstore are considering selling the Hanover landmark by March. Negotiations are underway with four potential buyers, bookstore general manager David Cioffi said.
"It's a good time in the history of the family to consider [selling] it because the principal owner died two years ago," Cioffi said.
The bookstore is currently the oldest in the country continuously run by the same family: the Stebbinses. Longtime owner Phoebe Storrs Stebbins -- the great-great-great-granddaughter of the store's founder -- died last March, and her estate cannot be settled until the store's value is determined. Cioffi's wife is Ann Stebbins Cioffi.
Cioffi, who has been managing the store since 1972, said he is ready to retire, and no family member has emerged to take the reins. Cioffi's daughter is a pediatrician in North Carolina. His son lives in Arizona.
"There isn't anybody in the next generation to take it over," he said.
But selling the store is not definite, depending on how good the offers are. There are currently four offers. Two possible buyers have dropped out. Most of the offers come from those in the book business, though Cioffi would not identify them or indicate if any were large, national chains.
"We want to be sure that if we sell, it will be someone who will maintain a classic large bookstore. That's important for Dartmouth students and for the Dartmouth community," Cioffi said.
The bookstore has experienced financial difficulties after it stopped carrying textbooks last year. Wheelock Books, owned by Whit Spaulding '89, is now the only textbook vendor in town after the College refused to require professors to submit syllabi to both bookstores.
"We never thought we'd see a situation where we couldn't get the information we need to compete," Cioffi said.
The bookstore also faces increasing competition from Internet booksellers and Borders Books and Music in West Lebanon, N.H., which is part of a large chain.
The 6,700-foot textbook annex, which is now used to sell clothing, shoes, music and bargain books, was constructed during the 1980s. Cioffi said the project was very expensive because of the installation of an elevator to make it handicapped-accessible and a cement floor so it would not collapse when crowds came in at the beginning of each term. After the store stopped selling textbooks, Cioffi has tried unsuccessfully to attract a tenant for the space.
"That's the albatross around our neck," Cioffi said.
If the Stebbins family does not sell the store, they will take measures to reduce its overhead, put in a cafe and lease out the space next to Everything but Anchovies.
According to Cioffi, the cafe would be in the area now occupied by the card shop in the back of the store's first floor. Tables would overlook Allen Street.
As for what he will do when he stops managing the store, "I'd enjoy going out to pasture for a year and figuring out what I want to do when I grow up," Cioffi said jokingly.
