This 3-story Florida Barnes & Noble lasted decades. But it can’t survive zombie mall

Howard Cohen Sat, November 14, 2026 at 5:01 PM UTC

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An aerial view of the Barnes & Noble bookstore at Shops at Sunset Place in South Miami. The mall will eventually be torn down and redeveloped as a mixed-use destination. ©Pedro Portal

The Barnes & Noble at The Shops at Sunset Place in Miami has been around for so long that Julio Iglesias Jr. signed copies of the People magazine naming him “one of America’s most eligible bachelors” from the store’s magazine section and gave cheek kisses to dozens of hopeful teens who turned out that day back in July 2000.

Times change.

Iglesias’ bachelor status ended 12 years later — and that three-story Barnes & Noble fronting the intersection of Sunset Drive and Red Road is finally closing its store at 5701 Sunset Drive to make way for the redevelopment of the location, the company announced Monday.

The last day of business will be Jan. 13, 2027. That Barnes & Noble store first opened in December 1998 with the mall, alongside the AMC movie theater, and is approaching its 28th anniversary.

If “finally” sounds flip, or an indicator of the bookseller’s misfortunes of late, that’s not the case. Despite its number of stores dropping below 600 nationwide after the pandemic, Barnes & Noble is on a renewed growth spurt and announced the planned opening of 60 stores in 2026. Its newest opened at Collection at Midtown Miami in October. A year ago, a new Barnes & Noble bookstore opened at The Palms at Town and Country in Kendall, a replacement for a larger, older store that was closed a mile away at Kendall Village.

Today, the chain says it has more than 740 bookstores, including several in the Tampa Bay area.

But that Sunset Place store couldn’t survive the mall’s demise. Developers started talking in 2024 about tearing down the mall for a central public plaza with residential towers, retail and restaurant space, and walkways. The zombie South Miami mall, which used to be the ill-fated Bakery Center in the mid-1980s and, before that for generations, an aromatic Holsum Bakery you could smell for miles, once defined suburban entertainment. But the demolition to begin the long process of building a dense mega-development still has some obstacles to overcome.

Midtown Development, the developers, told the Miami Herald this summer the plans are still on, but it’s going to take a while. They weren’t ready to say when.

The pending closure of Barnes & Noble in January would leave the AMC 24-screen movie theater the sole survivor of the original corporate chains at Sunset Place.

“We have had a long tenure at The Shops at Sunset Place, brought to an end by the redevelopment project,” James Daunt, CEO of Barnes & Noble, said in a statement. “We are very grateful to the community for their support and look forward to opening further new bookstores across Miami in the coming years.”

The chain said it will offer its staff jobs in surrounding stores.

Original Article on Source

Source: “AOL Money”