Old Goat Books, a fixture of Uptown Waterloo for more than two decades, however, a fire in an adjoining unit in December caused the business to temporarily close.
Starting Feb. 1, the store is launching a temporary location at 35 King St. N. The original location is projected to re-open in March.
The store was started in 2001 by Michael Loubert and Scott Wicken. At the time, they had been working at a second-hand bookstore in Kitchener and decided that Waterloo was in need of its own used bookstore as well.
In 2023, the store was taken over by Erica Nikolaus, a former elementary school teacher who has experience in the publishing industry.
Though the fire in December forced the store to close, there was no damage to the store itself. However, the books were subject to a lot of smoke damage.
“Books have several enemies. One of them is smoke,” Nikolaus said.
The affected books are in a restoration facility, where they first have the soot cleared and then are placed into an ozone chamber to remove the smell of smoke.
“I’ve actually gone and smell tested a couple of batches of books at the facility, and they smell great. They smell like books again,” said Nikolaus.
While the store waits to reopen, Old Goat Books has held pop-ups at the Princess Cinema.
“They have a gallery space in the basement, so they’ve kindly let us use that space. And the pop-ups have been lovely. It’s been nice to chat with people,” Nikolaus said.
“The last thing we want is for people to forget about us, or for the rumor to get around that we’re closing for good or something like that. It’s just a way of staying current and in contact with our customers and the community.”
A lot of the store’s clientele are students from the University of Waterloo, Laurier and Conestoga, but they also have a crop of regulars that have been going to the store for years.
“We’ve had a good mix of younger clientele and older clientele, the people that have always lived in the neighborhood and always shopped at the store,” Nikolaus said. “I get to meet a lot of nice people.”
In her role as owner, Nikolaus curates the store’s collection and offers recommendations to patrons.
The store purchases most of their books directly from members of the community. More information about this process can be found on the Old Goat Books website. Purchases are based primarily on what the store thinks the community will be interested in and what genres are currently in demand.
“The community has been so supportive—and that’s really the silver lining to this all. The thing that keeps me going is that I can tell that Waterloo is very focused on keeping arts alive and keeping community businesses alive and keeping bookstores alive,” Nikolaus said.
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