The Barnes & Noble at 1091 El Camino Real in Redwood City is closing September 16 after its landlord terminated the lease, ending a 33-year run — even as the chain simultaneously plans two new Bay Area stores, in Cupertino and Fremont, for this November.

"We much lament this closure in Redwood City, the difficulty of which is heightened by the suddenness with which we are obliged to close," Barnes & Noble CEO James Daunt said in a statement to the San Francisco Business Times, which first reported the news. Staff will have the chance to apply for jobs at other locations.

This is the second Bay Area Barnes & Noble to close this year. The San Bruno location, at the Shops at Tanforan, went dark in May, SFGATE reported, as that mall heads toward demolition — a wholesale property story. Redwood City is quieter: a strip-mall anchor, three-plus decades on the same corner, loses its lease because the landlord declined to renew.

The closure sits oddly against the company's own numbers. Barnes & Noble counted just under 600 stores as recently as 2023 and now operates 712, with 60 new openings expected nationwide by year's end, according to the San Francisco Business Times. Two of those are Bay Area locations: one at 20740 Stevens Creek Boulevard in Cupertino — a former Party City space, per San Jose Spotlight — and another at Fremont's Pacific Commons shopping center. Both are slated for this November. "Happily, we welcome two new stores to the Bay Area this year, allowing us to continue to serve this book-loving community," Daunt added.

By the math, the Bay Area nets one bookstore. What the arithmetic skips is the particularity of the Redwood City address — the tenure in that space that the Stevens Creek Boulevard location, opening in a room that until recently sold streamers and latex balloons, will not carry in on day one. The store's recorded voicemail offered no details on the lease, per SFGATE, but noted there would be "some exciting sales of almost everything in the store."

Come late September, the space at 1091 El Camino Real, next to the Pet Food Express, will be empty. What goes in next is now the landlord's call.