Another one of Wichita’s oldest retailers is in danger of closing

UPDATED — Last month, there was news that Cero’s Candies, a Wichita fixture since 1885, is closing its storefront while the owner tries to rethink the business.

Now, another longtime Wichita business is in danger of closing.

Al’s Old & New Books owner Anita Siemer says she isn’t sure how she can afford to keep her downtown store open.

“The landlord and I couldn’t really come to an agreement, and I’m either going to close or move,” she says.

In 2014, Siemer moved the store from Delano to the newly named Block One, an area anchored by the Ambassador Hotel and the Kansas Leadership Center along Douglas and a couple of properties Slawson Cos. had been redeveloping to the south.

At first, things were good, Siemer says.

“It was crazy busy in this area.”

A lot has changed since then, though.

For starters, the Department for Children and Families left downtown.

“After they moved out, it just turned into a ghost town on this block — on this street,” Siemer says.

“There’s just no visibility here,” Siemer says. “Let’s face that. There’s just nobody here.”

That is, she says, unless you count homeless people sleeping on benches and people who use the Wichita transit system stopping in for change for bus fares.

“It gets stressful.”

Also, Sudha Tokala, the pharmacist and developer who is bringing a medical and trade school complex to the area, is now Siemer’s landlord and is in the beginning stages of redeveloping buildings around the bookstore.

Tokala couldn’t be reached about her plans for the bookstore space or the area immediately around it.

Siemer says she doesn’t have two years to wait to see what impact the school has, and she also wonders if people attending the school would even have time to read anything not related to their education.

Returning to Delano, which is where the store had been until Siemer’s landlord sold her building, is an option. However, Siemer says she hasn’t found anything that’s both affordable and safe.

If she can’t soon, she says she’ll close the store by late January.

Siemer says she’s “brokenhearted.”

“I feel like I failed the bookstore,” she says. “I didn’t want the store to die. It’s been in Wichita since 1957.”

She says it actually was in business for 15 years before that under a different name.

“It basically just moved all up and down Douglas.”

The store always varied just a bit, she says.

Sometimes that meant simply selling things to read.

“Sometimes it was books, magazines and cigars.”

Siemer bought the business in 2005. Bookstores, particularly ones with used books, are a much different business today than then.

“I can’t bring in the kind of income it takes for rent,” Siemer says. “Wichita’s a really hot item, I guess. . . . Developers think so.”

She’s open to selling the business, but Siemer says she’d rather stay in business herself.

“It used to make all its bills in Delano. That’s the part that really hurts,” she says.

“And I’ve loved every minute of it. I kid you not.”

Though Siemer says that “there’s nothing wrong with chain stores for what they are,” that could be all the city winds up with.

“I think the mom and pop stores more and more are going to struggle with all of this,” she says.

“Shop local was never so important as it is now. If you don’t shop your local small businesses, they’re all going to be gone, and you’re just going to end up with chains.”

This story was originally published December 9, 2019 at 5:04 AM.