The Community Bookstore, a Brooklyn Legend, Will Close Within a Year: Report

In today’s damp summer copy of the New York Times comes a devastating piece of neighborhood news with a bittersweet ending.

John Scioli, founder and overseer of the legendary Community Bookstore in Cobble Hill, has reportedly sold his shop — and the three-story brownstone it lives in, which he bought in 1985 — for a cool $5.5 million.

According to the Times, Scioli has a year to clear out his shop:

This time there is a happy ending, if not for the neighborhood, then at least for Mr. Scioli, who will soon turn 70. His is not a case of an opportunistic landlord shutting down a beloved shop — if it was, that would have happened long ago. Mr. Scioli was able to stay as long as he did only by virtue of owning the building, which he has finally agreed to sell after offers piled up like the donated books on his stoop. A few buyout proposals were actually slipped under his door.

Not only is Mr. Scioli getting $5.5 million for the three-story brownstone, but he has a year to clear out the shop and another two years to move out of his apartment upstairs — time he very much needs.

“I’ll be the first to admit I’m a bit of a hoarder,” he said last week from his regular perch, a blue folding chair just outside the bookstore’s doors. “I was afraid I was going to die under a pile of books one of these days, and no one would ever find me.”

Scioli’s musty shop is an absolute labyrinth of cheap paperbacks, hardbacks and everything in between. They cascade down the walls and aisles like molten lava. One gets the feeling that one could topple the entire formation with a sneeze — but that if one did, it would be no biggie. Scioli would build it up again.

The Community Bookstore in Cobble Hill is, without doubt, the coolest bookstore in Brooklyn. We’re pretty crushed to see it go, but it’s good to know it’s on Scioli’s terms.

No one’s picking up the phone at the Community Bookstore today, so we’ll probably just have to trek down to that air-conditionless lit jungle to confirm this life- and Brooklyn-changing event for ourselves.

Until then, from the archives: A Patch profile of Scioli and his Cobble Hill institution.