Barnes & Noble will open its new, 13,000-square foot store at Congressional Plaza in Rockville Wednesday, Aug. 5.
The store is less than a mile from its current Rockville location at Montrose Crossing, which remains open through the end of the day Tuesday.
The Congressional Plaza Barnes & Noble includes a B&N Cafe with food and drinks, including Nitro coffee. There are also “book rooms” based on genre, which the company says make browsing more intuitive, and a children’s section arranged by reading age.
In these COVID-19 times, browsing books can be a potential point of virus spreading, so the store has designated spaces marked for customers to deposit any books they have browsed but not purchased. Those books are taken out of circulation for sanitizing.
Federal Realty owns both Congressional Plaza and Montrose Crossing.
In 2018, Barnes & Noble closed its big Bethesda Row store after 20 years.
Barnes & Noble has about a dozen stores in the Washington area currently, though three of its former stores in the District are marked as permanently closed.
Barnes & Noble was acquired last fall by hedge fund Elliott Advisors, which also owns Waterstones, the largest retail book seller in the United Kingdom.
