Wednesday night, signers of the petition Save the St. Mark's Bookshop received an e-mail from Frances Golding, a founder of the Cooper Square Committee, and Joyce Ravitz, chairperson, informing them that the board for Cooper Union, St. Mark's landlord, was asking its Finance and Business Affairs Committee to examine St. Mark's Bookshop's request for a lower rent from its current rate of $20,000 per month. The outcome will be announced at the end of October.
"We believe that Cooper Union is stonewalling this issue, hoping our community will forget about the bookstore," the e-mail said. "We need you to send this petition out to all of your friends and family today. Help us reach 50,000 signatures by the middle of October."
It was also announced that Michael Moore will appear at St. Mark's on September 29 at 7pm to sign his new book: Here Comes Trouble: Stories from My Life.
St. Mark's has been embroiled in a rent conflict with its landlord Cooper Union for months, in the face of its struggling sales. It was reported the bookstore is looking for a $5,000 per month cut in its rent. The petition to save the bookstore appeared in early September, asking for 4,000 signatures. Since then, the called-for number of signatures keeps increasing, but so have the number of people signing it; as of Thursday morning the petition had 38,810 signiatures.
