There's good news and sad on the bookstore front: Two new locations of bookstore chain Barnes & Noble are opening in the Dallas area, one soon and one very soon, but a third is closing this week.

Closing
The store in Plano at 801 W. 15th St. is closing on Sunday, June 15. According to a company representative, the Plano store is an older, larger store model that the chain is turning away from, in favor of a new smaller model it's embracing for all new stores.

This Plano store is also within close proximity to three other Barnes & Noble locations: West Plano, Richardson, and Allen which just opened in 2024.

Other Barnes & Noble locations with that same older/larger floorplan include Preston & Park in Plano; Prestonwood Center in North Dallas, and Lincoln Park in Dallas across from Northpark Center.

Opening
On the bright side, there are two new Barnes & Noble stores opening in summer/fall:

• Rockwall, at 1009 E I-30, will open in late summer in the space formerly occupied by Staples, which closed in January 2025.
• Prosper, at 1191 Gates Pkwy., in the newly developed Gates of Prosper, will open in the fall.

According to a spokesperson, both stores will follow the chain's new design seen in their most recent store openings, featuring "all the best books, toys, games, vinyl, and gifts our customers have come to expect." They will both span approximately 20,000 square feet, and will both house a B&N Café.

In August 2019, Barnes & Noble was acquired by Elliott Advisors (UK) and taken private. Elliott’s acquisition of Barnes & Noble followed its June 2018 acquisition of Waterstones, the largest bookseller in the U.K.

Barnes & Noble is experiencing a period of growth, the result of a strategy to hand over control of each bookstore to its manager. They're enjoying strong sales and have opened many new stores a comeback after 15 years of declining store numbers. In 2022, they opened more new bookstores in a single year than in the entire decade from 2009 to 2019.

They've continued to open more locations, including three in the DFW area in 2024: the store in Allen, as well as stores in Flower Mound and Richardson.

Barnes & Noble, Inc. is the largest retail bookseller in the United States. The company has more than 630 bookstores across the U.S., as well as its online bookstore at bn.com, the Nook Digital business which offers both e-books and an audio book subscriptions service, the SparkNotes educational service, stationery and gift retailer Paper Source, and the publisher Union Square & Co.