Sarah McNally in the New York chapter of McNally Robinson.

McNally Robinson Booksellers won’t open their Toronto store for another whole year, but the location has already sparked a bunch of arguments. Not only did the demolition of the Don Mills Centre mall in favour of a newfangled lifestyle environment rankle local lifers, the decision to close a location in Calgary — and sell the building to support the eastern move — generated a flurry of criticism.

The fact that the historical building the McNally clan moved into in 2002 was bought for $5 million two years later, and sold for $8.3 million four years after that, was called hypocritical by National Post columnist Kevin Libin. The news reports had Tory McNally — three years old when her mother opened their first location in Winnipeg in 1981 — saying the Calgary operation wasn’t sustainable.

“Being in the business district meant the store was only crowded during certain hours of the day,” says Tory. “If anyone thought we were succeeding all the time it was because they were also there during those hours — it would be absolutely deserted at night. If we were serious business people, we’d have given up long before we did. We kept moving the closing time up earlier and earlier, but it wouldn’t have made sense to only open the store between 11:30am and 2pm.”

That location will close on Aug. 1, meaning more bile from Calgary media cursing McNally Robinson for selling out to Toronto may be yet to come.

But like the sentiment that accompanied news of the 169-year-old Book Room closing its Halifax doors last month — poetically, the owner knew it was over when he noticed the tenant upstairs bought a book they carried in the store from Amazon — the elegies tend to be written a day late and a dollar short. McNally Robinson, by contrast, perfected a formula that makes their stores a destination.

Or, at least that’s their hope for the Shops at Don Mills, slated to formally open on April 8, 2009 in the middle of the continent’s first planned community. The spot was previously occupied by an indoor shopping centre that, after nearly 30 years, became so sedate that the senior citizens in the area couldn’t stand to see it go. (Concerns about re-development are still being aired on a Don Mills Friends site.)

“Well, older people are huge book readers,” says McNally. “And they buy lots of books for their grandkids. But we’re not just rolling out a cookie-cutter store — a big part of the appeal will depend on a parking lot, which Calgary didn’t have.”

What the locations all have in common are the Prairie Ink restaurants, which also host live author and music events in a more atmospheric setting than foldout chairs between stacks. The layout will have common elements with the existing stores, with shelves laid out in a radial plan, rather than cross-aisles. McNally Robinson currently has two locations in Winnipeg — one of which, in the Polo Park Shopping Centre, opened earlier this month. There’s another location in Saskatoon — which, prior to 1998, couldn't sustain any independent bookstores.

It’s a different story in Toronto, of course, but McNally will stay far off their downtown turf. Rather, the store is wading into the kind of suburban area that became more synonymous with oversized Chapters locations that never seemed particularly well considered. (A store at Yonge and Steeles closed for good earlier this year.)

“I think they were just opening stores for the sake of opening stores,” says Tory. “Like the Cold War, where the weapons were being accumulated for no reason, except to keep the competition scared. And now you’re seeing the results. It was less of a factor in the Prairies, since Chapters didn’t try and take over the market, but there are still too many Indigo locations everywhere — it’s one after another.”

Yet, she doesn’t see the monolith as their competition, since the McNally Robinson stock is more specialized — without the expectation that everything that doesn’t fly off the shelves should be sent back to the publisher. The store in Saskatoon, for example, has an extensive section dedicated to military history.

The end of competition between book superstores in Canada might give Indigo Books & Music logistical breathing room, however, unlike in the United States where the bricks-and-mortar Borders chain is exploring “strategic alternatives” to stay afloat in the face of online retail, and cheaper best-sellers at discount stores.

“We’re able to take risks that a publicly traded company can’t,” says Tory. “What they might see as a scary business proposition is something we are willing to try.

“You can shop online all you want, but there’s still an appetite out there for The Third Place. People want to leave the house and have that kind of interaction, and preferably not in a Future Shop where there’s pressure to buy something.

“My family never got into this business expecting to make gobs of cash, anyhow.”

McNally Robinson might be best known in Toronto for the fact that the name is attached to an unaffiliated store in New York City’s Nolita neighbourhood, which opened in 2004, and is run by Tory’s sister, Sarah. But that store will change its name to McNally Jackson, since that’s the surname of her husband. “Robinson” was a partner when the store opened in 1981 — Ron Robinson, who left to work for CBC Radio.

But expectations are that the brand name will translate to Don Mills, a location offered by developer Cadillac Fairview, giving the half-century-old community its first taste of cultural commerce, even if Tory and her husband won’t live nearby.

“To be honest, I’m not really a suburban girl,” she confesses. “We’ll probably find a house around the Danforth, and then I can easily ride my bike north everyday.”

Previously on the Scroll: World’s Biggest Bookstore

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