04/06/2026
The Oklahoman reported today that the Edmond City Council approved $17 million in city funds on March 23 for developers of The Legacy at Covell, located at I-35 and Covell Road. These funds will be used as incentives to attract businesses to the development. We generally support development that enhances our community by increasing sales tax revenue without negatively affecting local business owners. In fact, we’re excited to see this area and what it could mean for our community in terms of new sales-tax revenue.
However, we were surprised to learn Barnes & Noble is being promoted as a business to be recruited with these approved funds. We appreciate Richard Mize and The Oklahoman for raising awareness about the impact on local business owners, especially our independent bookstores, including Bluebird Books, Best of Books, Archives Books, and A Novel Idea Bookshop in Guthrie. We will post the link to the news article in the comments, as well as a link to the video of the City Council meeting, where you can watch. Below is the message our owner, Lori Dickinson Black, shared with the mayor and councilmembers:
I want to begin by saying I support economic development and understand the importance of continuing to grow our tax base.
However, I’ll be honest, when I heard we were incentivizing Barnes & Noble as a tenant being actively recruited to Edmond, I was like “What the heck!” to put it very nicely.
It isn’t that Barnes & Noble shouldn’t have a place here (Edmond). It’s what its arrival represents in this moment, and what it signals about the direction we are choosing as a community.
Edmond already has three independent bookstores - Bluebird Books, Best of Books, and Archives Books. These stores didn’t arrive because of incentives or recruitment efforts. They exist because local entrepreneurs took risks, signed leases, invested their own capital, brought in private investment, and showed up every day to build something meaningful for our community.
We’ve created spaces where people gather, children discover reading, events are held, and relationships are built over time. We collaborate with one another - calling to help locate books, working together as Central Oklahoma booksellers, and even organizing “book crawls” to support not just our own stores, but each other.
Independent bookstores and small retailers are already operating in a very challenging environment, especially with the rise of companies like Amazon, which has fundamentally changed how people buy books.
Recognizing this shift and after years of decline and the closing of many of its large-format stores, Barnes & Noble has re-concepted its model to compete more directly with independent bookstores.
That approach has been successful.
They opened 57 new stores in 2024, more than they opened in the entire previous decade from 2009 to 2019. In 2025, they opened more than 60 stores, and in 2026, they have plans to continue at that pace.
That’s not just growth, that’s a full reversal from decline to aggressive expansion.
But that success has come from adopting many of the strengths of independent bookstores and competing more directly for the same customers, not from creating an entirely new demand for books.
So, this isn’t just adding another bookstore. It’s introducing a well-capitalized, internationally backed competitor into the Edmond market that is intentionally targeting the same space independent bookstores have worked hard to build.
And I think it’s important to recognize that not all sales and new business are created equal. The adage in the restaurant world is, “a rising tide lifts all boats,” because we recognize that more options don’t necessarily mean we’re diluting market share, because we’re drawing more people to a business center.
But statistics show that more bookstores don’t create more business. More bookstores in Edmond at this point means someone is going out of business. There isn’t unlimited growth in book sales. When a new bookstore enters a market, it typically shifts where people buy books rather than dramatically increasing the number of books purchased or increasing sales tax revenue.
When we’re making this choice to give public dollars for incentives to Barnes & Noble, we’re also making the choice to lose some, if not all, of our independent bookstores in Edmond. So, keep that in mind when you’re talking about creating a new tax revenue stream – it’s not new, it’s just coming from a different place.
The question is not just what we are adding, but what we may be affecting by bringing Barnes & Noble into our market.
And I think that’s a reasonable question to ask when public incentives are involved.
I also hope we can pause to recognize and value the entrepreneurs and small business owners who are already here, those who have taken the risk to build something meaningful from the ground up in Edmond.
We sign the leases. We invest our own capital. We show up every day to pay the bills, generate sales, employ residents, collect sales tax, support local nonprofits, and build community, because we are fully invested in Edmond.
I understand there is real risk in development as well. But there is just as much, if not more, risk carried by small business owners who do all of this without the support of millions of dollars in public incentives.
So again, I want to be clear, this is not about opposing growth, and it’s not about opposing this development. It is about asking whether our approach to economic development truly reflects the values we want to carry forward for Edmond, not just today, but for the years ahead.
Because the decisions made here tonight will shape more than our tax base, they will help define Edmond’s identity and the kind of community we offer to future generations.
The Edmond I want to be a part of is one that focuses on building and growing our small businesses and strengthening the business centers that already exist.
As we pause to consider developments like this, I would ask: are we following the roadmap for what we want Edmond to become? Are we shaping the city we want to be known for? And are we continuing to craft the kind of community Edmond was founded to be?
