SU Bookstore adopts new programs to rival The Art Store

It can get pretty packed in the cramped basement of the Schine Student Center, location of the main section of the Syracuse University Bookstore. Students stock up on books and notebooks and other school supplies while others wait in impossibly long lines to check out. The whole store is packed during the first week of the semester, but one section seems less populated - the art supply section. Several art, architecture and design students escape from the claustrophobia of the bookstore art department in stretch limos as they are taken to the bookstore's competition. Their destination, a few blocks away, is The Art Store, a nearly 50,000-square-foot warehouse that has been transporting students to and from the store during the first week of school for 33 years. Andrew Tufts, a sophomore landscape architecture major, chose The Art Store over the bookstore this year. "[The Art Store] really has everything and our professors recommend them," he said. "It's very convenient because they put a lot of the stuff we need into kits and we just buy the kits. We normally get really good deals there. It's going to be more expensive if you buy it at school." The limos are an added bonus, of course. It's difficult for students to transport their purchases back to their dorms. This is where The Art Store limos come in. David Cohm, the executive vice president and chief operations officer of The Art Store's parent company, Commercial Art Supplies CAS Industries Inc., said, "Our drivers are asked to take the students back as close to their dorms as the university allows." "As long as we're on city streets, it's not a problem," Cohm said, "but the university doesn't really want our vehicles on the private property because what we do takes away from bookstore business." Though the bookstore can't take students and their purchases to the front of their dorm, they have two new programs that might be just as helpful. After the recent move by the SU School of Art and Design from Lyman Hall downtown to The Warehouse, the Syracuse University Bookstore set up two online stores (one for the School of Architecture, the other for the School of Art and Design) for orders to be delivered to The Warehouse. Mireya Porter thinks this will be helpful when the weather changes. "When the weather gets really bad, [the products] will arrive and be clean and free of the elements," Porter said. The Slocum Store at the School of Architecture was also added as an extra convenience. Originally it contained supplies needed by architecture students, but due to the proximity to the Schaffer Art Building, the store has added art supplies to the product selection. It is pretty hard to compete with The Art Store's large space. Where some stores might have 12 of one item, The Art Store may have 300. This makes it pretty hard to run them out of any supply, Cohm said. The bookstore also offers an art department shopper card. During the school year students who spend more than $30 on a visit to the art section of the bookstore earn a punch on their card. After six purchases of this kind, they get a $20 coupon toward their next purchase of $30 or more. The Art Store limo service only runs until Monday, when it becomes slightly more of a hassle to shop there. The store isn't that far from campus on the corner of South Crouse Avenue and Erie Boulevard East. Cohm said that the students continue to do business with the store by sharing rides, taking the bus and even walking.

aucollma@syr.edu