If Centuries & Sleuths bookstore owner August “Augie” Aleksy had his way, he would close the store one last time on Dec. 31 and turn over the building and the inventory to a new owner. But, as he noted wryly when the Review stopped by on Dec. 6, life doesn’t always follow his best-laid plans.
Aleksy said that he is currently entertaining two serious offers for the store from two parties interested in using the space as a bookstore– one from two sisters from Virginia and one from a local duo. They are negotiating details, and at least one of the parties is trying to line up the necessary financing.
At this point, Aleksy doesn’t expect the conversations to wrap up before the end of the year. While he previously said that he intends to retire in the end of the year whether he sells the store or not – and he reiterated in a recent interview that he would still ideally like to retire then, he was also very interested in making sure that the space remains a bookstore. If it takes a few more weeks to hash out the details, Aleksy said, then so be it.
As the name implies, Centuries & Sleuths focuses on history and mystery. The store has been a Madison Street corridor mainstay since 2000. Aleksy announced his intention to retire by the end of the year in late May, but he told the Review that he wanted the space to remain a bookstore, whether it follows his concept or not.
Since then, he entertained several offers. Aleksy declined to go into details on the record, saying only that he’s been talking with the two sisters from Virginia for months. The second offer, that came in a few weeks ago, came from a poet and a local publisher. The two were recommended by a friend. Aleksy also got some other offers, but he said he found these two the most promising, so he is focusing on them.
Aleksy and his wife, Tracy, own the building the store is in, so they have some flexibility – but he said that they’re not interested in being landlords, so whoever buys a bookstore is buying the building as well. They would inherit his inventory, but not most of the knickknacks and displays that dot the store shelves – those belong to the couple, so they’re keeping them.
While Aleksy said he was eager to retire, he didn’t want to rush the process, either.
“I don’t think it would be wise for business to say – if you’re not going to buy it by Dec. 31, forget it,” he said.
Until the store does change owners, Aleksy isn’t slowing down. When the Review visited Centuries & Sleuths, he was busy putting up a miniature model of the Battle of Waterloo on the display window. The smaller, more seasonal model of the 1914 World War I Christmas armistice was already up.
Aleksy previously told the Review that he had always been interested in opening a bookstore, but it wasn’t until 1989 that he left his job in banking to take a plunge. He and his wife went to a workshop for booksellers, and he used his experience in banking to develop a business plan.
At the time when bookstore chains like Borders and Barnes & Noble dominated, the last thing Aleksy said he wanted to do was to open a “generic” bookstore. He was already interested in history, and when he looked at what people were checking out at the Oak Park Public Library, he noticed that it, along with mysteries, were two of the most popular genres. A survey he sent out to Oak Parkers confirmed his findings.
Centuries & Sleuths originally opened in Oak Park at 743 Garfield St., near the spot where Oak Park Avenue crossed the Eisenhower Expressway. Aleksy said he simply couldn’t afford a space in any of the village’s major commercial corridors, and he hoped to turn the location to an advantage.
“I anticipated that people would come here on the way back from work,” he said. “But most people were only interested in getting home from work.”
Undeterred, Aleksy kept going – all while trying to find a better location. And eventually, an opportunity did come. A customer gave him a contact for Art Jones, then a vice president of Forest Park National Bank. In the late 1990s-early 2000s, Jones and bank president Jerry Vainisi were looking to diversify the Madison Street shopping strip beyond bars. With their support, he moved to the Madison Street space and got help buying the building – something that he was eager to do because leasing the Oak Park space led to many frustrations.
During the recent interview, Aleksy reiterated what he told the Review back in May – for all the frustrations of running a small business, he was proud that the store became a community hub, a place that many customers appreciated.
“In the past 33 years, I’ve been lucky,” he reflected.
