Penguin Bookshop

Rebuilding Begins

RE-construction of the Penguin is in full swing!  This is a view of the back of the store showing the new brick facade and the cutout for the new two-story window.  Click here to see a previous post with a picture of the same area.  It looks quite different with the roof and back of the building gone.  You can also see the nearly completed elevator shaft that goes from the basement to the second floor (once we have a second floor).  There will be a stair tower between the elevator and the new two-story window.  We are at the point now where the building is literally taking more shape every day!

Green Materials Arriving & TY to Neighbors

We are bringing environmentally responsible green construction materials to Sewickley on March 25th. That is the date that the Nature Neutral company will deliver all the FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certified wood products for the reconstruction of the Penguin Bookshop. The materials are all made in a way to guarantee the sustainability of our forests for the future. Although these materials are more difficult and expensive to acquire, they are necessary to fulfill our commitment to LEED certification.

We have also gone to great lengths to find brick that matches the original brick façade from the early 1900s. The color and consistency of this brick will restore the historic look of the original building on
Beaver Street and blend well with surrounding buildings.

Everybody involved in this project wants to thank Tom McCargo of Graham Realty for his cooperation as a neighbor of the Penguin Bookshop and for allowing us to stage materials from his nearby property. His generous cooperation is making it much easier for us to complete the project with minimal impact on the community. Thank you Tom!

Leah and Karen Return from Booksellers' School

Last week, we went to an Opening a Bookstore conference In Florida.  The seminar was an intensive week of classes covering everything Bookstore.  Days were spent on marketing, management, financing, purchasing, staffing, store design and much, much more.  With heads spinning, we returned to snowy Sewickley to design and implement a plan to make sure that the Penguin Bookshop is all that everyone dreams it can be and to keep everything moving forward. 

One of the best things that happened at the conference was that we established many valuable professional connections and began friendships with several interesting people from all over the country and even Anguilla in the Caribbean.  There were two women from Kennebunkport, Maine who are on the same time line as we are for opening their store, Kennebooks.  We tried to convince one woman from Florida to come work for the Penguin Bookshop but she has family ties there.  We met outgoing friends from Oklahoma who share the dream of owning their own bookstore.  The class members included a mother and daughter group from Charlottesville, VA who want to open a children's bookstore patterned off the Wild Rumpus in Minneapolis.  There was a woman who just moved with her family to Utah for the outdoor lifestyle, but laments the lack of an independent bookstore.  There was also an ESL teacher from Minneapolis, MN who wished that her international ESL students had a place to buy books in their own languages.  We met a single mother from Portland, OR who wants to open a bookstore for parents to come together to share and connect.  There were many others and it just goes to show that Americans are starting to move away from the big-box stores and are looking for something more personal. 

Thanks to our first commenter Lisa R.  We would love to hear from anyone who wants to give us feed back as we continue this journey. 

Thank You to Dollar Bank

If you have walked by the back of the Penguin lately, you will see a huge blue tarp over the second floor. The elevator shaft to the second floor is now completed. Our contractor is tearing down the inner wall of the old Penguin, next to Dollar Bank, today and putting up a new concrete block wall. We had a great meeting with several people from Dollar Bank this morning and they eagerly offered to work with us during this process. This will involve coordinating the separation of their roof and utilities and creating complementary facades. They were responsive to our requests and seemed pleased with our plans. We were also happy to find out that they will be giving their Sewickley branch a facelift soon.

On another note, our contractor is going back in for a couple more stents in his heart tomorrow and insists that he will be back on the job by Friday afternoon. He is certainly not going to let any grass grow and we continue to be grateful for his diligence on this project. He an his crews have made every effort to minimize the disruption to people in Sewickley Village by working a lot of evening and weekend hours. 

Roof's Gone!

If you have walked by the back of the Penguin lately you have seen that the roof is gone.  The original first floor was only in the front half of the building.  The new design expands the second floor to the full length of the building and the new elevator shaft (see the next picture) is in the new part.  The old roof was in the way and had to go! 

The Elevator is Going Up

This is a shot of the new elevator.   The photographer is standing in the basement looking up.  You can see the door openings for the basement and the new first floor. 

The RE-Construction Begins

Our primary contractor is back on the job (yes his heart attack was a week ago Monday) while he insists he is feeling fine and ready to work, we have been encouraging him to delegate the heavy lifting.  Below are posted three pictures we took over the past week.  It doesn't even look like the same place.  Walk by the front window when you get a chance before the window is gone too!  This week marks the beginning of the re-construction with the pouring of the new footers.

We have been thrilled with the tolerance of our neighbors during all of this.  We have had absolutely no complaints and the work trudges on.   

Basement Excavation

The basement was excavated down a little below the original building footers so that we could add more support and lower the first floor.  The new footers are being poured this week.

Pile Ready for Recycling

As part of our LEED certification, we have had to recycle as much of the old bookshop furnishings and building material as possible.  Below is one of many stacks organized by material that were sent out for recycling.

First Floor Demolition

Here is a view of the first floor looking toward the back of the store.  All of this material was organized into stacks and as much as possible was sent out for recycling.  Our construction team had its work cut out for itself!  Even though this picture was just taken last week, the room is completely emptied out and the back door on the left now opens up to a pit to the basement.