The Book House Negotiations Difficult and Costly, But On Track for Move to Maplewood

The Book House bookstore owner Michelle Barron is losing her lease in her 2-story 1863 frame house in Rock Hill that has housed her business for 30 years.

She’s in the process of moving the business to Maplewood. Her lease is up at the end of July, which wouldn’t give her time to move to the new space. She said her landlord will now give her until September to be out.

The negotiations with her landlord have been difficult and costly.

“I’ve thought about going to court,” she said, “but I’ve been told even if we had 3,000 people there, we’d still lose.”

She’s still working on the lease in Maplewood, at 7352 Manchester Road, and said she’ll tell everyone when it’s signed.

“I’m having a sign printed to go on the door as soon as we sign the damn lease,” Barron said. “It’s at the printer now.”

She said the Maplewood space is actually two buildings. One, she’ll be able to begin moving into right away, and the other needs extra work.

“The way we’re going to get this to happen is we’re getting historic tax credits on this building to do the work, but until we do that we can’t put anything in there.” She said the floor needs to be reinforced.

“Eventually we’ll have this whole big giant space, which will be amazing, and we’ll open it all up and it will be 6,000 square feet, but it’s not going to happen immediately,” Barron said.