Barnes & Noble is planting a new flag in Midtown Miami, signing a lease for a space that once housed West Elm inside the Collection at Midtown Miami retail complex. The move comes even as one of the chain's longest-running South Florida outposts, tucked inside the aging Shops at Sunset Place in South Miami, faces an uncertain future with the mall itself slated for demolition.
According to Miami New Times, the bookseller is opening a store at the Collection at Midtown Miami, and property managers there have confirmed the new location will measure 13,958 square feet and feature both a modern design and a full-scale Barnes & Noble cafe. As reported by Commercial Observer in December, the retailer signed a 10-year lease with two five-year extension options for the roughly 13,890-square-foot space, with a target opening of October 2026.
The Midtown store isn't Barnes & Noble's only recent South Florida move. The company already opened a location at the Palms at Town & Country Shopping Center in October 2025 and another at Colonial Palms Plaza that September, per Miami New Times' reporting, part of what the outlet describes as dozens of new stores opened across the country even as the chain has also closed hundreds of others nationally.
Sunset Place's Demolition Clouds an Old Anchor
The Sunset Place Barnes & Noble remains one of the few tenants still operating inside the 1999-era open-air mall, alongside Tea & Poets, according to Miami New Times' reporting. The South Miami City Commission has approved plans to tear down The Shops at Sunset Place for a mixed-use redevelopment with seven towers rising up to 33 stories and more than 1,500 residences, as World Red Eye reported, with demolition scheduled for 2026.
That leaves the Sunset Place bookstore's fate genuinely up in the air. Miami New Times' reporting frames it plainly: the location has an uncertain future as the aging South Miami mall faces demolition, and the paper notes it reached out to Barnes & Noble for comment on the situation.
The closures piling up elsewhere in South Florida add to the uncertainty. Miami New Times reports the Barnes & Noble in West Kendall shut down in late 2025 and the Pembroke Pines location closed in early 2026, while Barnes & Noble laid off full-time employees amid the broader retail pressures the chain has faced this year. Inc. updated its list of the company's looming store closures as recently as July, the outlet notes.
A National Strategy Behind the Local Moves
The pattern in Miami mirrors a national playbook. Under CEO James Daunt, appointed after hedge fund Elliott Management acquired Barnes & Noble in 2019 for $683 million, the retailer eliminated guaranteed publisher shelf placement fees and empowered individual store managers to curate local inventory, according to edgeX Exchange. The chain opened 57 new locations in 2024 and 67 in 2025, and plans 60 more in 2026, according to the ICSC, part of a long-term push toward more than 1,000 U.S. stores. Hoodline previously reported on that 2026 push, and the retailer has since confirmed additional tenancies, including as a retail tenant at a new lifestyle center in Orlando.
Private equity firm Elliott Advisors is reportedly weighing an initial public offering in London or New York for the combined Barnes & Noble and Waterstones enterprise, targeting a potential valuation of $4 billion, per Forbes. Amaya Nichole, writing for Miami New Times, notes that nearly every Barnes & Noble closure is attributed to an expiring lease or mall redevelopment rather than a retreat from a given market, and that the company has not decided to pull out of South Florida because of the listed closures.
Miami's Bookstore Scene Isn't Just a Chain Story
Independent booksellers are expanding right alongside the corporate chain. Roots Bookstore & Market, described as Liberty City's first Black-owned bookstore, opened on Juneteenth 2025 on NW 15th Avenue and celebrated its one-year anniversary in June with a book fair featuring more than 20 local authors, per WLRN. Romance-focused retailer Steamy Lit relocated its main store to Fort Lauderdale's Thrive Art District and opened a Miami Springs branch on Curtiss Parkway, capitalizing on demand for romance and “romantacy” titles, according to Shelf Awareness. Miami New Times also notes newcomers Quade Books and Posman Books both opened in 2024.
Longtime local anchor Books & Books, founded by Mitchell Kaplan in 1982 in Coral Gables, still operates multiple South Florida locations including Coconut Grove, Bal Harbour and Key West, hosting more than 400 community author events annually, per Time Out. Nationally, roughly 605 new independent bookstores opened across the country in 2025, an 87% jump over the previous year, according to edgeX Exchange — a sign that brick-and-mortar bookselling, chain and independent alike, is finding new life even as reading habits shift. An industry study cited by The Robin Report found daily pleasure reading in the U.S. dropped more than 40% over 20 years, with the 19% of adults who read 10 or more books annually accounting for 82% of all books consumed in 2025 — the kind of super-reader base that today's cafe-driven, community-oriented bookstores are increasingly built to serve.
For now, Miami New Times reports that social media users, including the account @miamibucketlist, have already spotted signage for the new Barnes & Noble at Midtown Miami, suggesting the October 2026 opening target is on track even as the Sunset Place location's future remains unresolved.
