Steve Salis has owned Kramerbooks & Afterwords since 2016.

Joe Flood / Flickr

Updated on July 30 at 6:14 p.m.

It appears, for now, that beloved Dupont bookstore Kramerbooks & Afterwords Cafe with remain in its homestead location for at least three more years.

The store’s owner Steve Salis told the Washington Post on Thursday the shop’s tenure in Northwest D.C. ranges anywhere from three to six years, when the store’s lease expires.

“We are not imminently leaving tomorrow,” he told the Post. “We will most likely be there for six years, and just to be clear, that is when our lease ends. But we will leave no sooner than three years.”

The store also announced Thursday it’s getting a rebrand and will now go by “Kramer’s,” and its Afterwords Cafe as “All Day by Kramers.” Washingtonian reported it is also looking to add a new restaurant, as well as a flower and barber shop, to its ranks, with the possibility of more additions moving forward.

All of this factors into a more complete integration of the store’s many components, starting with its stock and trade—books. According to Washingtonian, the flower shop will highlight thematic titles on architecture or gardening, bookshelves will be added to the dining room, and soon, customers will be able to purchase them with their food.

The store announced its departure earlier this year, in the midst of the pandemic, to the dismay of many locals. At the time, Salis said he was looking to move the store elsewhere in the District, but contrary to earlier reports, he told the Post he did not plan on moving the store this year.

Salis said he has doubled down on efforts to fix up and refurbish the store amid a recent outpouring of support, including an expansion to the shop. Part of his decision to move forward with renovations is motivated by the recent resolution of a long-standing legal battle with one of the store’s landlords over said renovations.

Alex Koma, who broke the news of the store’s decision to move for Washington Business Journal, said the announcement is not far off from when Salis first said the store was moving, and that Salis is ultimately considering breaking his lease before it expires in 2026.

Original:

For more than 40 years, Kramerbooks & Afterwords Cafe has been an anchor of Dupont Circle. Now, if owner Steve Salis gets his way, it will find a new neighborhood. The restaurateur told Washington Business Journal that he has decided to move the bookstore elsewhere in the District.

“There are a slew of landlords out there who would love to have us,” Salis told the outlet in a story published Tuesday.

Salis did not elaborate to WBJ about which neighborhoods he’s considering for Kramerbooks’ second act, but moving has long been on his mind: He told the publication last summer that he thought Capitol Hill, Penn Quarter, H Street, and Union Market were all possible locations for an expanded Kramerbooks.

Through a representative, Salis declined to comment to DCist.

Salis—who co-founded &pizza and has since purchased Ted’s Bulletin and the bakery Sidekick—became the owner of the bookstore-slash-cafe in 2016, taking over from founders Bill Kramer and David Tenney. His time running Kramerbooks has reportedly been rocky. In early 2017, the store’s longtime management team quit in a coordinated effort over “concerns about the work environment,” according to the Washington Post. (Two of those employees later opened Solid State Books on H Street.)

Though Kramerbooks expanded into a neighboring space on Connecticut Ave. in 2016, Salis also planned a $3 million renovation project last year, telling WBJ at the time that he wanted to move the shop into “experiential retail.” His plans prompted a two-year legal battle with one of Kramerbooks’ landlords, which appears to be the reason behind the threat to move.

“We are more committed than ever to preserve and protect Kramers for another 50 years,” the bookstore tweeted Tuesday evening. “Unfortunately, our landlord will not allow us to do so in Dupont Circle.”

The bookstore’s lease ends in 2026, per WBJ, but Salis tells the site that he’s confident the bookstore can move before then.

After a wave of fans mourned the news of Kramerbooks’ planned move on Twitter, Kramerbooks emphasized to its social media followers that the shop isn’t closing permanently.

“Guys, we are not dead!” the store wrote on Instagram on Wednesday. “If we do move, it won’t be for some time and we hope this gets resolved with our landlord who hates books and reading.”

Though Salis and the store seem to emphasize the landlord dispute as the reason for a move, WBJ also notes that he has “serious doubts about the future of retail in Dupont.” He would be the latest in a series of leaders to show their concern about the neighborhood. In 2016, restaurateurs told Washington City Paper that reduced foot traffic had left Dupont Circle’s decades-old restaurants barely hanging on.  One restaurant owner called Connecticut Ave. north of the circle “a forgotten corner.”

Two years later, local business owners—including Salis—told WAMU that the development of other neighborhoods, such as the 14th Street corridor and Shaw, were attracting young people elsewhere, and high rents were leading to vacancies in Dupont.

“Many landlords are still living in the heyday. They think it’s Dupont of the ’80s and ’90s where it was the Mecca,” Salis said at the time. “That attitude has hurt the trade area tremendously.”

The Dupont Circle Business Improvement District was borne in 2018 out of efforts to recapture the neighborhood’s “cool factor.” Its executive director, Colleen Hawkinson, argues that, contrary to Salis’ current doubts about Dupont, the neighborhood is growing.

“The BID disagrees 100 percent with one person’s assessment on what Dupont offers,” Hawkinson tells DCist, adding that six new businesses joined the group between January 2019 and January 2020.

Hawkinson says she hasn’t spoken to Salis since WBJ’s story, nor is she aware of the status of his legal battle with his landlord. (Though she adds, “I don’t think that’s abnormal.”)

In a tweet, John Falcicchio, D.C.’s deputy mayor for planning and economic development, called Salis’ declaration to move “troubling,” adding that he’s in talks with Dupont Circle’s Business Improvement District to find ways to keep the bookstore in the neighborhood. (Hawkinson confirmed she did speak to Falcicchio “briefly.”) “I also wonder if there’s a possibility of finding a location nearby—who knows maybe even partner with @DupontUndergrnd,” Falcicchio wrote, referring to the embattled arts space down the street from Kramerbooks.

Kramerbooks has been something of an institution for Dupont Circle since it opened in 1976. And though chain bookstores—including Books A Million, Barnes and Noble, and Borders—have folded in the city, Kramerbooks has remained as popular for its wide selection and author events as it has as a date night spot. It has made DCist’s lists of best independent bookstores, and has been visited by famous readers (and has a particularly unusual chapter in the Monica Lewinsky scandal).

Though Kramerbooks has been closed to patrons since the coronavirus pandemic rolled into D.C., the shop is offering delivery of food and books via Postmates. It has also hosted a pop-up from one of Salis’ other D.C. businesses, Federalist Pig. Salis told WBJ he expects Kramerbooks to “come out of this beautifully.”

Washington Post national reporter Mark Berman speculated on Twitter that Salis’ comments to WBJ might be public posturing with an intent to affect the legal battle with his landlord.

“If you were, say, an owner looking to show your landlord (who you’re fighting in court) that you’d really leave the location unless they agree to what you want, saying it publicly amid the court fight might be exactly what you’d do,” Berman wrote. Kramerbooks’ account retweeted the tweet.

Hawkinson points out that Kramerbooks’ social media posts indicate that, were a move to happen, it wouldn’t be for “some time.”

“What’s that phrase–‘Reports of my demise are premature?'” Hawkinson says. “Nobody really knows what’s going on.”

This post has been updated with social media posts from Kramerbooks, and comment from Dupont Circle BID executive director Colleen Hawkinson.

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