Penn bookstore to undergo summer renovations

There’s a new edition of the bookstore coming out this fall.

The Penn Bookstore is undergoing renovations this summer from June 3 to early August in preparation for the fall semester. Among the new additions to the bookstore are the PennCard office, Computer Connection and the creation of a new multipurpose study space.

In addition, the Wi-Fi signal will be improved, and convenience food options around the store will be more centralized in the cafe. The first floor will also undergo some changes, including the relocation of more spiritwear to the front of the building.

The goal is to make the bookstore more of a student hub on campus by offering retail and multiple services in one central location, Associate Vice President of Business Services Chris Bradie said.

Currently, the PennCard office is located at the Franklin Building on 3451 Walnut St., but it will move to a new office on the second floor of the bookstore.

Bradie hopes that the new location of the office will encourage students to use some of the less well known aspects of the PennCard office, such as its notary public, passport photo and PNC banking services.

“We want to make [the bookstore] very convenient and offer a lot of services that people need, and that’s one of the reasons we chose PennCard — because it is more than just your PennCard,” explained Barbara Lea-Kruger, director of communications and project management for Business Services.

With the renovations, Computer Connection will move to its own office inside the bookstore, though the University, not Barnes & Noble, will still run it.

The PennCard and Computer Connection stand-alone offices will replace the section currently housing music and DVDs on the second floor. Because of changes in how people consume music and DVDs, which will now be spread throughout the store, Building Services looked at other ways to use the space.

“The freeing up of that space and the need to do something different with that part of the business allowed us to think differently about the space as a whole,” Bradie said.

“When we thought about other kinds of things to go there, we didn’t turn to another product line — we actually turned to another service center altogether,” he said. “It really enabled us to have a different discussion based on where business is going.”

Next to the cafe on the second floor, a new study space will be added with desks, chairs and outlets. When necessary, the space will transform into a presentation room with seating for 50 people and appropriate multimedia equipment for events such as author lectures and book signings.

“We decided to take a step back and look at the overall space allocations in the store and decide what we want to do, and when we thought about it, it was to make this multipurpose, multiuse scene,” Bradie said.

Student feedback, including requests for more tables and outlets, was taken into account during the redesign.

“We’re able to respond to a lot of the requests that we’ve had, in terms of shoppability, how we use the space and we can accommodate that, so we’ve really taken the opportunity to do it,” Bradie said.

During the renovations, the bookstore will still be open regular hours with some areas sectioned off for construction and some items moved to new locations. The renovations should be finished within the first two weeks of August.

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