A large red sign announcing a closing sale hangs on the door of The Observatory, a downtown bookstore. After selling books for nearly 40 years, the store\u2019s owner has decided to call it quits, but the future of The Observatory is still unclear.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve always loved it because I love books, and I love bookstores, but it was about time,\u201d said Dee Longenbaugh, who opened the store in 1977.<\/p>\n
The Observatory, located on the corner of Franklin and Third streets, has been closed since January when Logenbaugh, 82, fell ill. The store will reopen for a 10-day going-out-of-business sale on Nov. 16. Longenbaugh doesn\u2019t yet know what will happen to her store after the sale ends.<\/p>\n
She hasn\u2019t yet set a final closing date, nor has she established a sale price for her business, she told the Empire Monday afternoon. Longenbaugh\u2019s sister will be traveling to Juneau from Sitka later this week to help nail down the details.<\/p>\n
For now, Longenbaugh just hopes that whomever buys the store won\u2019t repurpose the space.<\/p>\n
\u201cI really recommend a bookstore for anybody who loves books,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s wonderful having a bookstore and chatting with people who come by. That\u2019s been one of the charms of having the store.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2022 Contact reporter Sam DeGrave at 523-2279 or sam.degrave@juneauempire.com.<\/p>\n
Correction: Dee Longenbaugh’s name was mispelled in an earlier version of this article. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A large red sign announcing a closing sale hangs on the door of The Observatory, a downtown bookstore. After selling books for nearly 40 years, the store\u2019s owner has decided to call it quits, but the future of The Observatory is still unclear. \u201cI\u2019ve always loved it because I love books, and I love bookstores, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":14004,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-14003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14003\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14003"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=14003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}