Barnes & Noble returning to central Fort Worth, years after Sundance store closed
A Barnes & Noble bookstore is coming to Fort Worth’s West 7th Street corridor.
According to a filing Monday with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, the retailer is moving into Montgomery Plaza, in a big-box space that most recently leased to Office Depot.
The filing indicates that the 20,000-square-foot Barnes & Noble with a cafe may be selling books by the holidays. About $500,000 in interior construction work is expected to start in July and wrap up in late October. The shopping center is also home to Target, HomeGoods and PetSmart.
Fort Worth has only one other Barnes & Noble, off Hulen Street. Other Tarrant County locations are in Burleson, Arlington, Southlake and Hurst.
Years ago, Fort Worth had other Barnes & Noble stores. In 1996, the bookseller opened a two-story location in downtown’s Sundance Square, on Commerce at East 3rd streets, around the corner from the AMC Palace movie theater. That store had loyal customers who were heartbroken when it closed on New Year’s Eve in 2013.
A second B&N closed at the same time in University Park Village.
But reports of the death of old-fashioned books were greatly exaggerated.
After years of decline, in no small part because of competition from Amazon and other e-retailers, Barnes & Noble now has plans to open 60 new locations across the country in 2026.
“Barnes & Noble is enjoying a period of tremendous growth as the strategy to hand control of each bookstore to its local booksellers has proven so successful,” the chain told USA Today in December. “In 2025, Barnes & Noble opened more new bookstores in a single year than it had in the whole decade from 2009 to 2019.”
Part of the company’s dramatic turnaround since new ownership took over in 2019 has been to allow individual stores to tailor the shopping experience and displays to their local markets, rather than corporate’s cookie-cutter mandates, according to reporting by ModernRetail.
The New York-based company now has more than 700 locations.
This story was originally published March 30, 2026 at 9:04 PM.
