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Barbara Clarke

    ECONOMY

    The Provincetown Bookshop Finds a New Home in Town

    Barbara Clarke will be both tenant and investor in Christine Barker’s Commercial St. projects

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — The new owner of the Provincetown Bookshop has found a home for her store, just a block or so from its former Commercial Street location. The building it had occupied for decades in its earlier incarnation was sold in June 2021 and is now home to Hennep — one of Provincetown’s five cannabis purveyors.

    A photo of the building on Commercial Street that will house the Provincetown Bookshop, circa 1930. The rear of the building was demolished in the mid-1900s and replaced with the warehouse that is now there. (Photo courtesy Christine Barker)

    Barbara Clarke, who bought the bookshop in September 2021, says she expects to open by the end of the month in a 450-square-foot space at 229 Commercial St., adjacent to Soft as a Grape, where Sea Bags used to operate. Christine Barker will be her landlord — Barker bought 227 and 229 Commercial St. from Scott Ravelson for $4.6 million in June.

    But Clarke is no ordinary tenant, and not just because she’s reopening an independent bookstore. She is an investor in Barker’s ambitious proposal to build a 31-room hotel, a restaurant and bar, and four luxury condominiums at the site of the Old Reliable Fish House, at 227R Commercial, which is directly behind the building at 227 Commercial St.

    Barker’s plan also calls for a 260-foot pier extending into Provincetown Harbor. She has a purchase and sale agreement for the Old Reliable property. Her plan easily secured the necessary permits in 2019 and 2020 but has been tied up for over two years by an appeal filed by three abutters in state Land Court.

    After Barker made small changes to the plan, Rob Anderson, who owns the Canteen, withdrew from the suit in 2021. During the summer, Barker satisfied another appellant, Ravelson, by buying his properties.

    Patrick Patrick, the owner of Marine Specialties, is the last remaining appellant. “We are talking, and hopefully we’ll have an agreement,” Barker said in a phone interview on Monday.

    Clarke, who has homes in Provincetown and Vermont, is the founder and president of The Impact Seat, an organization that invests in companies that are either owned or led by women, particularly women of color or from the LGBTQ community. She had been watching the progress of the Old Reliable proposal with interest. “I think it’s an exciting opportunity for the town,” she said.

    A year ago, Clarke met Barker through friends. “We just got to talking,” Clarke recalled, and Barker suggested the possibility of collaborating. Clarke has since invested in the Old Reliable project, and she and Barker are now working on plans for 227 and 229 Commercial.

    Barker said she is happy about the new business partnership. “And I love that she bought the bookshop,” she said.

    The buildings at the front of the former Ravelson property, including the little red one housing Essentials and the Soft as a Grape building, retain a lot of historical detail. “Both are beautiful, historic buildings, so we’re definitely not going to demolish those,” Clarke said.

    Behind the buildings are a warehouse and several empty apartments. “Those have been left to decay for years,” Barker said. She and Clarke have not yet formalized their development plan. “We are exploring mixed-use possibilities, including residential, hotel, commercial, and worker housing,” Barker said.

    Clarke agreed that addressing the need for employee housing is a priority. “It’s actually essential to my investment that we start to alleviate the challenges of the workers in Provincetown,” she said.

    Clarke will not be handling the day-to-day operation of the bookshop. “I will be very much involved but in the background,” she said. Derek McCormack has been hired as bookshop manager, according to the store’s Facebook page, which describes him as a “writer, reader, and bookseller who has been living in town since 2019.”

    The shop’s main offering will be “books and a little bit of vinyl and some cards and notebooks,” Clarke said. As part of the purchase of the business from the previous owners, she bought the collection of books that remained. She donated those to More Than Words, a nonprofit organization that provides jobs and training to youth. “I was pretty sure it was going to take at least a year before we got into a space, and the cost of storing them was almost equal to the books themselves,” she said.

    Because the store space is tight, “We’re going to have to be really intentional about what we stock,” Clarke said. She plans to rotate the collection based on themes the town may be celebrating, and she also wants to feature local authors.

    “The Provincetown Bookshop has been influential in the lives of people for 90 years,” Clarke said. “I want it to continue to be that memorable place.”

    CHANGING HANDS

    Buyer Is Found for Provincetown Bookshop

    Barbara Clarke hopes to open in a new location in summer 2022

    By

    It didn’t take Barbara Clarke long to decide she wanted to buy the Provincetown Bookshop.

    The store has been a beloved fixture in the lives of Clarke and her two daughters for nearly a decade, she said this week. She has particularly warm memories of visiting in the wintertime — opening the sliding glass door and shutting it as quickly as possible to keep out the cold air. When she learned the shop’s door at 246 Commercial St. would be closed for good unless a buyer stepped in, submitting an offer was an easy call.

    Barbara Clarke has agreed to purchase the Provincetown Bookshop from Philip Swayze. (Photo courtesy the Impact Seat)

    Clarke said she wants the bookstore to remain a “connecting point” for the community after she takes the reins from Philip Swayze, whose uncles, Joel Newman and Elloyd Hanson, bought it in 1963 and operated the shop for decades. Swayze and Clarke confirmed that the sale was expected to close on Wednesday, Sept. 8.

    Clarke, 55, who lives in Provincetown and Boston, is founder and president of the Impact Seat, a venture capital and philanthropic fund focused on technology startups led by women, especially women of color and from LGBTQ communities. She is also a lead investor in Portfolia, another venture capital company that funds women entrepreneurs.

    “My business is injecting capital into companies so they can grow,” she said. While this will be her first retail venture, she’s confident the community will continue to support the business. “Bookstores can be profitable in 2021,” she said. “It’s been 89 years — I think it’s been tested.”

    She said she envisions using the reputation of the bookstore, and of Provincetown in general, to attract writers for local events. “Provincetown has a deep tradition for the arts and the writers who have lived or come through here,” Clarke said. She mentioned a few names: Lauren Hough (author of Leaving Is the Hardest Part) and Michelle Zauner (author of Crying in H Mart and creator of the indie rock band Japanese Breakfast). “Wouldn’t it be fun,” she mused, “to bring someone like Roxane Gay to interview some people.”

    Joel Newman and Elloyd Hanson, who bought the Provincetown Bookshop in 1963. (Photo courtesy Philip Swayze)

    Swayze, who has run the store since 2014 after inheriting it from Hanson and Newman, said he had received one other serious offer, from a couple in California. “He was from Provincetown, and she is running a bookstore in San Francisco,” Swayze said. Ultimately, though, that deal fell through.

    The shop was listed for sale in June for $50,000. Swayze said he would “prefer not to say” what the agreed-on sale price was. “My uncles bought it for $2,000,” he said. “The money is important but not how I will remember it.”

    Swayze said each member of the staff has chosen a memento from the shop in addition to a favorite owl, the shop’s longtime mascot. As for himself, Swayze said he has taken an old wooden sign painted by his uncle, which reads: “Not a book in this window is likely to sell to Hollywood or to a liver pill company. Matter of fact, not more than five or six people in all Provincetown are likely to be interested in any one of them. But Pal, if you’re up to them, they’re the best reading in the world!” Swayze said the sign perfectly summed up his uncles’ stance on profits.

    Swayze has also commissioned an oil painting of the old Greek revival house at 246 Commercial St. where the shop has been since 1940. “You can’t take the creaky floorboards and the musty smell with you, so that has to live inside my brain,” he said.

    When Clarke reopens the store, it will be in a new location. The building that houses the current shop was sold in June to Paige Koudijs, co-owner of Mavis Tire Supply. Her son operates the Hennep cannabis dispensary in the adjacent storefront.

    Clarke, who worked in a bookstore when she was an undergraduate at Tufts, said she wants to reopen the shop in the West End next summer. “It’s going to be a challenge to find a spot,” she said. She wants to buy rather than rent, and hopes that anyone looking to sell in the West End will reach out to her.

    “Bookstores are great neighbors,” she said.

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