Will Haslam’s Book Store ever reopen in St. Petersburg? Here’s what we know.

Four years ago this week, Haslam’s Book Store shut its doors as COVID-19 spread across Florida.

The beloved shop at 2025 Central Ave. in St. Petersburg hasn’t reopened since. The owners have never announced that Haslam’s is going away for good, and the books remain inside on darkened shelves.

Tampa Bay residents and visitors still ask questions about the 91-year-old business and its future. We have some answers.

What’s the history of Haslam’s Book Store?

Mary and John Haslam opened the used bookstore in 1933. During the Great Depression, the St. Pete Catalyst wrote, the couple rented out books for 2 cents a day.

The store changed locations four times to accommodate its growth, according to the Haslam’s website. In the late 1960s, the current location on Central Avenue was a favorite spot for novelist Jack Kerouac, who lived in Disston Heights before he died. His ghost is said to roam the store’s checkered floors.

“It was such a well-known feature of the city,” said local author and former Tampa Bay Times journalist Craig Pittman, who started shopping there in the 1980s. “I was with a group of people who purposely drove to St. Petersburg from Sarasota to go to Haslam’s. It was like a tourism destination ... before the craft breweries and the baseball team.”

The store became known as a location for author events and signings. Guests were fond of meeting the bookstore cats.

“Because they sold a mixture of new and used books, there was no telling what you find in there,” Pittman said. “You might find stuff that was out of print or stuff you’d never heard of before.”

According to the Haslam’s website, Ray and Suzanne Hinst took over the business from Suzanne’s father, Charles Haslam, in 1973. The couple became the third generation to carry on the tradition.

When the pandemic started to spread through Florida, the couple posted on their website: “We are CLOSING for a while in the interest of public safety starting Sunday, March 22nd.”

Unlike other bookstores in town, Haslam’s did not attempt to pivot to online ordering during the pandemic.

Pittman still misses chatting with Ray Hinst and the bookstore clerks. He wonders about the future of Haslam’s every time he drives past. Whenever he does an author event at nearby Tombolo Books, readers ask him if he knows anything.

“It was such a warm and welcoming place ... and then boom — it’s gone, but its still there,” Pittman said. “I don’t know what to make of it.”

What’s the last update we heard from Haslam’s Book Store?

In the summer of 2021, Haslam’s was marked as “permanently closed” on Google. Shortly after, the owners sent a public statement to the Times via email.

“For a variety of personal and professional reasons Suzanne and I are still undecided about reopening the bookstore to the public,” wrote co-owner Raymond Hinst. “We appreciate everyone’s interest and are trying to consider all aspects of the situation. In the meantime our kitties are very happy in their new homes in the area.”

Haslam’s Book Store is still listed as an active business on sunbiz.org, Florida’s online business directory managed by the state’s Division of Corporations. Suzanne and Raymond Hinst Jr. were named as vice president and president on the store’s 2023 report.

The Tampa Bay Times emailed Ray Hinst twice and left a letter in the store mailbox to request an interview. There has been no reply.

Tombolo Books opened a few blocks away in December 2019. Tombolo saw an influx of former Haslam’s customers in the first few years after the pandemic arrived.

“They did ask about it,” said Alsace Walentine, co-owner of Tombolo Books. “But not as much now.”

As St. Pete’s popularity blossomed following 2020, the neighborhood changed. A new construction project has taken over the vacant lot in front of Calusa Commons, obscuring the main entrance to Tombolo Books, Black Crow Coffee Co. and Squeeze Juice Works.

“It’s been hard to have that building go in, but there’s no tenants in there yet,” Walentine said.

When asked what she would like to see on the Haslam’s block, Walentine suggested a parking garage. Drivers aren’t allowed to park in the vacant Haslam’s lots.

“It would be good to have activity in that area,” Walentine said.

Many books are still inside the bookstore. Are they OK?

Peek inside the windows of Haslam’s and you will see shelf after shelf of books. Some readers have expressed concern about the health of these volumes.

“They’re probably doing just fine,” said Michael Slicker, owner of Lighthouse Books in Dade City. “Books are hearty souls.”

Slicker, who specializes in antiquarian books, said humidity and variations in temperature can hurt books. But proper air conditioning and storage should be enough.

“The only other things are insects. Old coverings — cloth or leather — are generally glued or pasted with organic material, either animal or vegetable, and our little six-legged friends think that’s like ice cream,” he said. “But I suspect the books there in Haslam’s have held up very well.”

In one case, humans posed more of a threat to the books. According to an arrest affidavit from the St. Petersburg Police Department, a commercial burglary was reported at Haslam’s on Dec. 16, 2022. Joshua McCarty-Thomas, then 46, and Michael Campbell, then 45, were charged with burglary of an unoccupied structure.

Campbell confessed under oath that the pair stole 18 Elbert Hubbard books. The pair entered through a small window above an air conditioning unit, according to the affidavit. The books, which made it all the way up to Ohio, were shipped back to St. Petersburg. The owners of Haslam’s expressed a desire to prosecute.

The pair were also charged with stealing rare books from Lighthouse Books, as well as two endangered Galapagos tortoises worth $10,000 each.

“When the thief was arrested, we met in the police department and Ray and I sat across the desk from the detective,” Slicker said. “(Ray and Suzanne) are all doing very well as far as their health.”

How much could the Haslam’s Book Store property be worth?

Haslam’s Book Store once had an inventory of over 300,000 volumes. The 30,000-square-foot store, plus several surrounding buildings and vacant lots owned by the family, swallows up half of the block between 20th and 21st Streets North.

The Pinellas County Property Appraiser has the property divided into nine separate parcels. Their total market value is nearly $3.7 million.

But it’s difficult to understand how much the property as a whole could actually be worth.

“The sum of the parts, even though we have them broken out ... would probably be valued differently than they are for tax purposes,” said Anthony Siragusa, assistant director of commercial appraisal at the Pinellas County Property Appraiser. “If they were sold altogether, you’re getting a larger chunk of land in that location that would allow for different things under St. Pete’s zoning.”

For now, it appears Haslam’s is not for sale. The property has not been listed for sale on CoStar, a database of real estate information, said Jack Koehler, senior broker at Eshenbaugh Land Company.

“There’s quite a bit of demand from developers for sites like this, but there’s also tremendous headway,” he said. “There’s sky high construction costs right now. There’s crazy high insurance costs right now. And then on top of that, we’ve seen interest rate hikes that have made it more expensive to do these developments.”

Koehler noted that the historic Goodyear Rubber Products property a block away from Haslam’s sold for $2.39 million last year.

“It’s hard to put a value on something with the historic implications and location and importance to the neighborhood,” he said. “It’s very valuable, but value in the eye of the beholder.”

Could the Haslam’s Book Store property be redeveloped later?

“That’s definitely something worth worrying about,” St. Petersburg council member Richie Floyd said. “It’s on Central Avenue in the Grand Central District … it could absolutely be knocked down and something could be put there like condos.”

The stretch of Central Avenue that Haslam’s sits on is zoned as “corridor commercial traditional-2,” which means property can turn into a number of things, Floyd said.

According to city code, this category “generally allows one to five story development containing mixed uses with multifamily structures. Additional density is possible when affordable workforce housing is provided.”

After a number of constituents expressed concern, Floyd organized a private meeting with city staff in January to discuss a historic preservation designation. The property is eligible. Next, Floyd needs buy-in from the owners of Haslam’s.

“Some of the parcels could be redeveloped, some could be designated,” he said. “It just depends on what the owners want.”

He hasn’t yet been able to have a conversation with them.

Information from the Tampa Bay Times archive was used in this story.