Despite a year-long effort to find a way to stay afloat, Ruminator Books will close its doors for good at the end of July, 34 years after David Unowsky opened the store in St. Paul, Minn. The end came June 25 when his landlord and neighbor, Macalester College—to which he owes more than $500,000—served him with an eviction notice.
Unowsky admitted that he's always been more focused on books than profit. But he traced the financial problems that led to the store's closing back to his decision four years ago to open a second store in Minneapolis. In hindsight, he said, he realizes the location was too isolated to sustain a bookstore. The store lost money for three years until it closed.
In an attempt to keep Ruminator going, Unowksy spent his retirement savings, mortgaged his house and piled up a $100,000 balance on his credit card. Personally on the hook for some of the more than $1 million the store owes to creditors, Unowsky plans to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. He is not just out of business; he is broke.
Struggling with debt, Unowsky had been in discussions with Macalester for months, but those talks ended last week with the school demanding that Ruminator Books leave the property. "I'm evicted," the bookseller said. "This isn't my decision. I thought we had a deal with the college and we were going to go forward."
But David Wheaton, Macalester's v-p and treasurer, said they were never able to come to an agreement on future terms or on dealing with the store's past debt. "We had gone on for a long time and had been looking for a way to bring the discussions to a decision," Wheaton said. "This is not something that we approached or did lightly, and I think it will be a loss for our campus and the neighborhood," he added.
As for Unowsky, he is looking for a steady paycheck. "I'm 62 years old," he said. "I'd be happy to work for someone else and go home at night and not worry about making payroll."
