Hearthside Books moving to kids’ play zone at Mendenhall Mall; mall’s owners step in to buy, relocate play area

This story has been corrected to note Patsy Anderson-Dunn and husband, Kim Anderson, are the co-owners as well as maangers of the Mendenhall Mall.

Hearthside Books and Toys is moving from the Nugget Mall into the space at the Mendenhall Mall now occupied by Rainforest Play Zone, whose owners are departing for Haines. But it’s a story with a happy ending for the play space since the Mendenhall Mall’s owners are purchasing the business and moving it to a new location in the complex.

“The owners moved to Haines and are home-setting and weren’t going to be able to do it anymore,” Patsy Anderson-Dunn, the Mendenhall Mall’s co-owner with her husband, said in an interview Friday. “They didn’t really look for a buyer, they were just going to shut it down. And we just think it’s too important to do that, so we are buying it from them.”

The relocation of Rainforest is underway and should be complete within a few weeks, she said. Hearthside plans to continue operating normally at the Nugget Mall until late August, then take about a week to move to the Mendenhall Mall for an early September reopening.

“We need to be where people are and I think we can benefit any neighborhood that we are around, and now that is the Mendenhall Mall area,” Olga Lijo Serans, owner of Hearthside Books, said Friday. “There are a lot of housing developments that basically allow families to even walk to the Mendenhall Mall, which means that is where we should be. It’s usually a safe place for younger kids, for families and it’s a positive thing to do.”

Serans said she hopes Hearthside will do a soft opening at the beginning of September and a celebratory official reopening on Sept. 19, the bookstore’s 50th anniversary.

“This space that we are going to get is bigger than the one we have right now,” she said. “Because of all the logistics of moving we are not going to open all the space just yet. So the current plan is to still be carrying more or less what we have at the moment, and then as we settle down and we are able to get the rest of the space ready to use, I’m hoping to have some open space for book clubs and conversation groups.”

The announcement of the bookstore’s move comes the same week that crafts retailer Joann closed its doors as an anchor tenant at the Nugget Mall due to the retailer’s parent company filing for bankruptcy. It’s the latest of multiple closures over the years at that mall, which now has no anchor tenants in its main space, although it still has major “box” retailers with separate entrances such as Office Depot, Sportsman’s Warehouse and Petco.

Elizabeth Clayton, the property manager for the Nugget Mall, declined to comment Friday about the most recent developments involving Hearthwide Books and Joann. The mall’s owner — Seattle-based lending group Columbia Pacific Advisors, which purchased the complex in 2018 — could not immediately be reached for comment.

Anderson-Dunn said she and her husband regained ownership of the Mendenhall Mall about five years ago from an out-of-town investor, and has been able to continue making improvements.

“I take great pride in that we have pumped money back, instead of taking money out of state and away,” she said. “We’ve redone floors and lights and roofs, and just everything we can supporting this building.”

Rainforest Play Zone contains a variety of activities from a simple climbing area to a mini stage. Anderson-Dunn said “we’re fostering this child and then hopefully passing it on to a family in town, because it’s too important to lose something like that.”

A trio of parents sitting in a table area at Rainforest on Friday said there isn’t an indoor space in Juneau to take their kids offering a similar range of options.

“A lot of them are open-ended or gross motor things — that I would like to have in my house, but can’t afford,” Jessica Estes, who brought her three kids ages 3, 7, and 11 to Rainforest on Friday. “But we can come here and they can play with that equipment (since) we don’t have a real geodome or a bouncy house.”

• Contact Mark Sabbatini at mark.sabbatini@juneauempire.com or (907) 957-2306.