Tag Archives: Borders

PetSmart to Open in East Side Borders

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PetSmart is coming soon to East Side

PetSmart is coming soon to East Side

What is more boring than 12,000 square feet of empty commercial space? A store that isn’t needed. PetSmart is gearing up to open a new location in the bottom level of the bankrupt Borders in East Side. It isn’t needed, and we implore you not to shop there.

…Because there are already two fantastic, locally owned pet stores within a block from the Eastside shopping area.

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Pittsburgh Needs Bookstores, Not Halloween Costumes

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Lower half of Borders Eastside turned into a temporary Halloween store. Boring.

Lower half of Borders Eastside turned into a temporary Halloween store. Boring.

When holiday stores start filling up vacant commercial space in areas like East Liberty and South Side, that’s when you start to realize the roles of suburb and city are being reversed. For example, Halloween stores, which were once restricted to towns like Monroeville and Ross Park, are now occupying two former big box bookstores inside the city limits. East Side Borders and the South Side Joseph-Beth are the new homes of witch gear, scream masks, and a handful of temporary jobs.

These transient niche stores specialize in overpriced, single-serving costumes that take up valuable room in landfills after about 2.5 hours of use. But, the best Halloween costumes come from a mixture of creativity and some recycled old clothes from Goodwill – or Frederick’s of Hollywood, since Halloween is the one night a year when… yeah, you saw Mean Girls, right?

Halloween costumes in September? Boring.

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Borders Eastside Becomes “Fleeting Pages” May 7

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Fleeting Pages takes over the old Borders in Eastside for one month

Fleeting Pages takes over the old Borders in Eastside (pic by Ronald Woan)

Pop-up Indie Bookseller Fleeting Pages will re-open the doors at the empty Borders on Penn Circle South in East Liberty at 10am on Saturday, May 7, 2011. Fleeting Pages will sell independently published material of all stripes, as well as host writing workshops, literary readings and other events. Per their website, Fleeting Pages will take over “a space, left empty by a failed big box bookstore, for one month, and fill it with independent & self-published work of all kinds.” They currently have an open call for material.

Taking over the closed Borders Bookstore, Fleeting Pages will be open 7 days of the week until June 3, at which point this pop store will close its doors. “We felt that it was long enough to test some theories, and to make it worth giving up the rest of our lives for eleven weeks,” states Fleeting Pages creator, Jodi Morrison of Braddock, PA. Morrison explains her motivation behind the project; “I have always had a fascination with space, art, culture and economics.”
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East Side Borders Closing, Bookstore Bankrupt

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Borders in East Side closing due to bankruptcy

Borders in East Liberty closing due to bankruptcy

Borders officially filed for bankruptcy and they are closing about 30% of their stores. The East Side Borders is one of those 200 stores scheduled to close.

Pittsburgh is losing bookstores left and right. First Barnes and Noble, then the much-loved Joseph-Beth Booksellers closed twice, and now, the last remaining big box bookstore in the city, Borders in East Liberty.

Besides Whole Foods, Borders in East Side is one of the components to the transition from East Liberty to “East Side.” Target will open a couple blocks away, but what could possibly go in the Borders space? Nothing comes to mind. Look at the storefront between Borders and the liquor store… vacant since the the complex was built.
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