Barnes & Noble is opening 60 stores. It is selling time, not just books.

Barnes & Noble opened a store in Atlanta on July 8 with a café, games and magazines alongside the books, part of 60 it is opening this year. Disney opened a store in Brisbane that changes its stock every week. Primark is taking former anchor space in Houston, and Next is opening a 132,000 square foot anchor with its own café at Bluewater.

Different formats, one move. Each of these tenants is built to hold a shopper in the building longer, or pull the same shopper back more often. The tenant that keeps people in the center longer, or brings them back more often, is winning the lease. Retail space is being valued on time now, not just on the transaction.

Fifteen thousand square feet in the former Office Depot space next to a Kroger. Books, a café, games, a local author cutting the ribbon. The Edgewood store is one of three Barnes & Noble is opening in the Atlanta area this year, part of 60 nationwide.

The model behind the growth is the point. Under CEO James Daunt, each store is handed to its local booksellers, who choose the merchandise and the layout. The result reads less like a national chain and more like an independent shop. Curated selection, games and collectibles instead of mass-market racks, a café that gives people a reason to sit down.

A bookstore was never a fast-transaction tenant. What changed is that the slow visit is now the strategy, not a side effect. The café, the browsing, the local events are the reason the store works as an anchor. The chain is opening stores at pace because the format now rewards time spent, not just transactions completed. For the shopping center, that is a tenant that holds a customer in the building for an hour, not four minutes.

The chain is scaling by making each store feel less like a chain.

Disney opened a limited-time store in Queen Street Mall in Brisbane on July 4, running through September 27. Disney is not treating it as a temporary shop. It is treating it as a fan schedule. The store rotates stock weekly, hands out collectible cards from opening day, runs giveaways, and hosts a ticketed pin-trading event on July 8.

That mechanic is the difference between a pop-up and a programmed tenant. A conventional pop-up captures a single visit during a season. This one gives a reason to come back next week, because next week the merchandise is different and the event calendar is not finished. The fan does not visit once. The fan visits on a schedule the store sets.

Barnes & Noble makes the single visit longer. Disney makes the visit repeat. Both are doing the same thing to the same variable. They are buying time in the building, and time in the building is what a landlord can now underwrite.

For operators, this is the shift worth naming. The traditional way to value a tenant is productivity per square foot: sales divided by space. That number still matters, but it misses what the café bookstore and the weekly-drop fan store actually deliver, which is dwell time and repeat frequency.

Those two variables feed the whole center. A tenant that holds a shopper for an hour lifts the food court, the adjacent stores, and the parking economics. A tenant that pulls the same shopper back four times a month is worth more than its own rent line suggests, because it is generating traffic that the rest of the co-tenancy converts. This is why experience-led formats keep taking former big-box space that pure transaction retail vacated. The Barnes & Noble in Edgewood sits in a former Office Depot. The math that justifies it is not shelf yield. It is the hour a customer stays and the reason they return.

The rent used to be the number. Now the time is the number.

→ Primark, Willowbrook Mall, Houston. Opens July 16, in part of a former Sears, with a Castleton Square store in Indianapolis following July 23. Watching whether value fashion keeps taking former anchor space.

→ Next, Bluewater. 132,000 sq ft in a former House of Fraser, opening July 30, Bluewater's first new anchor since the center opened in 1999. Includes a Costa café. Watching the large-format anchor as a dwell-time play.

→ Bath & Body Works and Ulta. Bath & Body Works products enter more than 600 Ulta stores from July 12. Watching whether the wholesale route changes the brand's own store footprint.

→ US retail investment. CoStar reported first-quarter 2026 retail investment volume at $16.7 billion, up 31 percent year over year, the strongest first quarter on record. Watching whether experience-anchored centers command the premium.

→ Prada and Lure Fishbar, SoHo. After a year of speculation, Prada and the restaurant reached a deal, and Lure is staying. Watching how luxury brands pursue hospitality adjacencies elsewhere.

Barnes & Noble is opening 60 stores by making each one feel local and giving people a reason to stay. Disney is running a store in Brisbane that changes every week so people come back.

Barnes & Noble lengthens the visit. Disney multiplies it. Both are selling the same thing to the landlord.

The rent was the number. Now the time is the number.

Mati Brooks,

Editor, Malls Money

Malls.com tracks malls, brands, store openings, and retail expansion signals across 50+ countries.