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Electric Shadows bookstore to close

Canberra independent bookstore Electric Shadows will close before June as the store’s building has been sold for redevelopment and will be demolished.

The store first opened in 1987 under owner Andrew Pike and named after the adjacent Electric Shadows cinema. The cinema closed in 2006 and co-owners Anne Hutton and Katarina Pearson oversaw the bookstore’s move to its current location in Braddon.

‘The need to move and find new premises has forced us to assess our situation and so we have decided that after 27 years in business now is really the best time for us to call it a day, turn off the lights and shut the doors forever at Electric Shadows Bookshop,’ the owners said in the store’s final newsletter.

Rising rents were highlighted as a key factor. ‘Market rents have more than doubled in Braddon and effectively the redevelopment boom has now priced our small bookshop out of the area—and at this stage in our lives neither of us has the energy to pioneer yet another suburb!’

The store will host its final event on 27 March with novelist Amanda Lohrey in discussion with Clive Hamilton. The store will then move into ‘serious sale mode’ on 1 April, with the owners looking to sell all stock and store fittings.

 

Category: Local news