Barnes & Noble Reopens in Costa Mesa, Ending Decade-Long Gap at South Coast Plaza

Barnes & Noble is back in Costa Mesa. A new 27,000-square-foot store opened on the third floor of South Coast Plaza, drawing hundreds of people to a grand opening that filled the Macy's Home wing with browsers, families and longtime regulars who hadn't had a hometown Barnes & Noble to visit in nearly a decade.

The bookseller's return closes a gap that opened in December 2016, when its two-story Metro Pointe location across the street shut down after its lease expired, according to the Los Angeles Times. That Metro Pointe store had anchored the area's book shopping since 1996, and its closure left Costa Mesa without a major bookstore for years. The new location's 3333 Bear Street address, on the third floor of South Coast Plaza, was reported by the Los Angeles Times, whose Eric Licas covered the opening.

The space itself carries some retail history. It occupies a former Sports Chalet footprint that once housed a Borders Books & Music before that chain went bankrupt in 2011, according to Newport Beach Patch. So the third floor of South Coast Plaza's Macy's Home wing has now hosted bookstores across multiple retail eras, with Barnes & Noble the latest to claim the footprint.

Hundreds Turn Out for Grand Opening

The grand opening attracted hundreds of people, some of whom traveled well beyond Costa Mesa to be there. Attendees included locals and store regulars from Orange, Aliso Viejo and Long Beach, the Los Angeles Times reported. Among them were Daniella Dauncey, 21, and David Dauncey, who said they'd previously made trips to Barnes & Noble locations in Huntington Beach and Newport Beach before the Costa Mesa store existed.

Mia Haddadi, another attendee, said she uses Barnes & Noble stores as a place to unwind while shopping with her children — and she ended up spending two hours in the new store on opening day. That kind of lingering appears to be by design. The store includes cozy seating nooks for readers, an open and well-lit café, and mostly front-facing bookshelves meant to invite browsing rather than quick in-and-out shopping trips.

A Café With a View, and a Layout Built to Wander

Beyond the shelves, the new store features an expanded, company-branded B&N Café with an outdoor balcony patio overlooking the city, serving hot coffees, specialty drinks, soups and bakery items, according to WhatNow. The grand opening also featured a ribbon-cutting ceremony with local bestselling YA author Tahereh Mafi, plus opening-week promotions including 50% off hardcovers through Labor Day.

Store employee Hailey Chappell said readers are excited by the way the store's inventory and displays shift over time, describing changes in what moves, ebbs and flows at the store. She added that the layout itself encourages people to explore. That's not accidental: Barnes & Noble store staff curate what each location features and keeps in stock, tailoring offerings to their communities based on feedback from local readers, rather than following a single national template.

Part of a Bigger Turnaround

The localized approach traces back to a change in ownership. Private equity firm Elliott Management acquired Barnes & Noble in August 2019 for roughly $700 million, and CEO James Daunt has since decentralized store management, empowering local teams to shape inventory and layout instead of following uniform corporate templates, according to Business Insider. The strategy, adapted from Daunt's earlier turnaround of the British bookseller Waterstones, treats each store as a chance for chance encounters between people with shared interests rather than a standardized retail box.

The Costa Mesa opening is also part of a much larger national push. Barnes & Noble is targeting around 60 new store openings in 2026, following 57 new locations in 2024 and more than 60 in 2025 — a reversal for a chain that had shrunk to fewer than 600 stores before Daunt's arrival. Hoodline detailed that national expansion push in December, and Costa Mesa's new store marks the fourth Barnes & Noble opening in Orange County during the chain's regional revival, following recent additions in Tustin Legacy, the Outlets at Orange and Brea, according to the OC Register.

A Retail Anchor Amid Costa Mesa's Housing Fight

The new bookstore lands inside South Coast Plaza, a shopping center spanning 2.8 million square feet with more than 270 stores and restaurants that generates over $2 billion in annual retail sales. That scale makes the mall one of the highest-grossing shopping centers in the country, and placing a full-size physical bookstore inside it reflects how brick-and-mortar bookselling is positioning itself as an experiential draw within major commercial hubs.

South Coast Plaza itself has been at the center of a separate local fight over housing. California officials sued Costa Mesa in July over its non-compliant housing plan after key property owners, including South Coast Plaza, withdrew land parcels from the city's housing capacity calculations, Hoodline previously reported. Just across Bear Street from the mall, real estate firm MLC Land Holdings bought a 70,799-square-foot office site for $44.5 million in late 2025 with plans to redevelop it into 142 residential homes, according to the Registry SoCal — a sign of the residential density state housing mandates are pushing into the commercial corridor surrounding the new bookstore.